


Exodus

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackwatch Era, Happy Ending, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Vacation, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 14:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10220081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: Gabe thinks about what he owes Blackwatch, and Overwatch; about what Ana had told him; about white picket fences. He thinks about all the time he's spent fighting for a peace he might never get himself. He thinks about the last time he felt happy."Leave with me," Jesse repeats.And Gabe says, "Okay."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/gifts).



> For the amazing and wonderful [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/). Without your instigation, help, patience, cheerleading, and excellent beta work, this fic literally would not exist, so thank you. ♥
> 
> Thanks also to czargasm, who provided the obvious answer to what should have been an easy question, and to K, whose help with several logistics questions proved invaluable.

"Leave with me," Jesse says, pausing in the doorway of Gabe's office, one hand on the doorframe. He looks vaguely surprised, like he can't believe he's just asked. They've been arguing, again, about the kinds of missions Blackwatch has been sent on lately, and Gabe is surprised by the offer too. The way Jesse had gotten up and started to storm off, he'd assumed he wanted time alone, not to spend more time with Gabe.

"Where are you headed? I do need something to eat--"

Jesse cuts him off. "No. _Leave_ with me. Leave Blackwatch. Leave Overwatch. Come away with me."

"Leave Blackwatch?"

Jesse nods, folding his arms, setting his jaw. He's obviously not going to take it back, but Gabe just shakes his head.

*

"It ain't gonna get better."

"It doesn't have to get better." Gabe knows he sounds exhausted. "This is the job, and I have to do it."

"Are you really okay with it not getting better, Gabe?" Jesse asks, sounding just as exhausted. "And for how long? A year? Five years? Ten years? How long are you willing to put up with things how they are now, or worse?"

*

"I can't just _leave_ ," Gabe says. "I have responsibilities."

"They don't have to be _your_ responsibilities. Let someone else clean up Morrison's messes. It's a goddamn thankless job and you deserve better."

Gabe rubs tiredly at his eyes. "I deserve better, but somebody else deserves to shovel Morrison's shit?"

"You've done your time--done _more_ than your time." Jesse sighs. "Let someone else deal with it, or let Morrison shovel his own shit. Maybe he'll be more appreciative of the work you've been doing when he has to do it himself."

*

"This shit is killing you," Jesse says. "We both know it."

"I'm the commander of an organization that seems like it's doing its best to tear itself to pieces around me," Gabe growls. "It's never been a walk in the park."

Jesse's voice, when he replies, is careful. "If Blackwatch can't survive without you, then maybe it doesn't deserve to survive."

Gabe sees red for a moment--Blackwatch is _his_ , the _one_ thing he was given after the Omnic Crisis, and he has been doing the best he can with what he's been given and for anybody to _dare_ to think otherwise--just for a moment, and then his eyes refocus on Jesse.

Jesse looks...worried.

*

"Where would we go? What would we do?"

Jesse looks worn out. "What do you _want_ to do? The possibilities are endless; literally the only thing you couldn't do is 'this job'. You could get into consulting, go back to school, travel, get that white picket fence I'm pretty sure you've always wanted and spend all your free time adopting stray cats and building a deck. What makes you _happy_? Go do that."

"Where do you fit into all of that?" Gabe asks. It's an honest question, but it still feels somehow like a low blow.

Jesse deflates. "Thought maybe I'd be on the list of things that make you happy, but that's up to you, I guess."

*

The meeting with Jack goes about as well as can be expected, which is to say: very poorly. Gabe's been called on the carpet about the joint Overwatch/Blackwatch mission in Laos that went catastrophically wrong, even though he had attempted to call the Strike Commander's attention to the failure point during the mission planning last week and Jack had very deliberately ignored him.

Jack ends up standing about two feet from him and screaming in his face about Overwatch's reputation and how Gabe is killing him, _literally_ killing him, and what is Gabe going to do to fix this? Gabe stands motionless--mostly motionless, his hands slowly balling into fists, his jaw clenching and shifting but his mouth never opening.

He's aware of Ana across the room, standing silently, but he's not paying her much attention--not when Jack is red-faced and screaming, a far more obvious threat--until her voice cuts through the screaming, quiet and cold. 

"Gabriel. My office. Now."

Both men turn to face her. Gabe tenses for a fight, and Jack starts to argue with her, but her gaze is steely and unrelenting. She strides across the office and steps between them.

"My office," she repeats. "The code is Fareeha's birthday. I will be there in a moment. _Go_."

Gabe does not need telling again, and he stalks out. He hears Ana's voice begin to rise as the door closes behind him, and he allows himself one self-satisfied smirk before heading to Ana's office. Once there, he sits in one of the chairs in front of her desk and closes his eyes, just for a moment. He doesn't dare leave, in part because it's rare that she ever sounds so angry, but also because he's genuinely interested in what she's going to yell at him about.

Ana's 'just a moment' is about five minutes, and when she comes in, she pretty much collapses into the chair behind the desk.

"Why are you still here, Gabriel?" she asks him after several long moments of probing silence.

"You told me to wait for you--"

"Not here," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. " _Here_." She gestures vaguely with both hands at everything around them. "Overwatch. You're obviously unhappy, and while I believe that Blackwatch's failures are truly not your fault, your results _are_ slipping, and Jack has every right to be angry."

"Am I being _fired_?" Gabe asks, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice.

"Jack would sooner cut off his actual right hand than lose you. You know this."

"He's got a real fucking funny way of showing it," Gabe mutters, but he finds he can't disagree.

They both know he hasn't answered Ana's question.

"You know that Jesse is thinking of leaving?"

Gabe nods. "Keeps trying to convince me to go with him."

"And you know that he will go without you, if he needs to." This isn't a question, and Gabe's stomach jolts as he stops for the first time to think about this as an outcome to his and Jesse's incessant arguments. It hadn't ever occurred to him that Jesse might _leave_ \--they're a team, personally and professionally, and _of course_ Jesse would stick with him.

Wouldn't he?

"I am certainly in no position to lecture you about choosing to be right over those you care about," Ana says, cutting into his thoughts as she casts a glance sideways at a framed photo on her desk, "But I _can_ tell you that it will not feel as good to win that argument as you think it will."

"I'm still here because I ought to be--because I have to be," Gabe says, finally answering Ana's earlier question, but now he's not so sure.

*

"Leave with me," Jesse says up into the darkness that night. Gabe is almost asleep, almost doesn't hear him.

He rolls over to face Jesse, studying him in the darkness. He thinks about what he owes Blackwatch, and Overwatch; about what Ana had told him; about white picket fences. He thinks about all the time he's spent fighting for a peace he might never get himself. He thinks about the last time he felt happy.

"I love you," he tells Jesse, pulling him close. Jesse seems a little surprised, and kisses Gabe: his lips, his cheeks, his nose, his forehead.

"Leave with me," Jesse repeats.

"Okay," Gabe says. He takes and lets out a deep breath. "Okay. What do we need to do?"

Jesse looks at him like they've both just witnessed a miracle.

*

They spend the morning packing and getting their paperwork in order. The only person they need to tell is Jack Morrison, but the strike team is such a close-knit little family that Gabe can't imagine resigning without telling them too.

None of them look surprised when Gabe summons them all to his quarters and explains; Jesse's been pushing this angle pretty hard for a while. They've all spent multiple evenings debating this very topic, whether it's better to do a thing you didn't believe in yourself, or leave it to someone who might do a worse job of it. Gabe had been coming down on the side of staying, trusting himself and his team, but--

"I'm resigning too," Prithi says, her voice firm.

"You don't have to do that," Gabe says. He looks at her with concern.

"I know I don't have to. I _want_ to. I've wanted to for a while; I just needed a push, I guess."

"If you're out, I'm out too," Valdez says, and suddenly Gabe's chest feels tight. "I don't trust Overwatch, Reyes, I trust _you_."

Shiga laughs. "Well, if all of you are going, it won't be any fun here without you. I might as well quit too."

"You really don't have to _quit_ , you're doing important work--" Gabe tries to interject, but Shiga cuts him off.

"I want out, boss. Seems like we all have, just needed that push out the door."

(Next to Gabe, Jesse is grinning.)

All eyes turn to Edwards, who snorts. "This is my job. You guys expect me to quit my _job_ , with no warning, because the rest of you want to feel all kumbaya about the hard, important, necessary work we do?"

"You don't have to quit, really," Gabe says cautiously.

"I know! I'm not going to!" Edwards throws his hands up, then sighs. "At least let me--let me think about it, okay?" Prithi puts a hand on Edwards' shoulder, and Gabe watches as Shiga catches Jesse's gaze and rolls his eyes. 

Valdez, meanwhile, comes over to Gabe and says quietly, "I know you guys were all set to resign today--" Gabe looks at her in surprise, and she laughs. "I've worked with you for years, Reyes. You're not a man who'll sit on a plan that's ready to execute. All I'm asking is that you wait another day or so, let the rest of us come with you when you go. Nothing I know about Strike Commander Morrison makes me think he's going to take this anything but poorly, and I'd like to be well clear of the blast radius when you decide it's time to drop this bomb. You owe us at least that much."

*

Gabe tells the team to bring their paperwork back by his quarters before tomorrow, and then he waits. He gets lunch in the canteen. He checks in on the new recruit training session he'd foisted off onto Bennett when he'd thought he was leaving today. It feels weird to see new people joining Blackwatch when Gabe doesn't quite feel like he can vouch for it anymore, but he puts on his best stern commander face and tries not to let anyone know his plans, in case they try to talk him out of it.

When he gets back to his quarters, Jesse, Prithi, Shiga, and Valdez are seated on the floor sorting through a worryingly large stack of papers.

"--will you do when you leave?" Shiga is saying when Gabe walks in. "You...guys? You?"

A shadow crosses Jesse's face before he notices that Gabe has come back; Jesse gives him a questioning look. Of all the logistics they'd discussed about actually leaving, somehow they'd never quite made it to the _after_. That had never seemed like the hard part.

Gabe smiles at him and his questioning look, a bright, hopeful feeling in his chest. Jesse smiles back.

"Don't have much in the way of friends or family on the outside," Jesse says, and there's a note of something Gabe can't quite place in his voice. "Figured I'd stick with the Commander, if he'd have me."

"Always," Gabe says.

(Valdez snorts, and Prithi says, quietly but with fondness, "You guys are gross.")

"And I won't be 'the Commander' for much longer. Soon I'll just be Gabe Reyes."

"'Gabe'," Prithi says, trying it out. She giggles.

"Okay, _Gabe_." Shiga sounds just as amused as Prithi did. "Where are you two headed after you drop the mic on Morrison's desk tomorrow?"

"You probably won't believe it, but I hadn't thought that far ahead."

Valdez actually laughs out loud. "You're going to want to lie low for a while, I'll bet."

"If you don't have anything particular in mind, my family's got a place in Hawaii you could stay for a little bit, relax and regroup," Shiga offers.

Gabe raises an eyebrow. That's an incredibly generous offer.

"My grandma would love to have you, I promise. She asks when 'that nice cowboy' is coming to visit again all the time," Shiga says, nudging into Jesse with his shoulder.

Jesse goes pink. Gabe's going to have to ask him about that sometime. (He has a vague memory of the early Blackwatch years, Jesse slipping away at some holiday and coming back loose-limbed and tan. Gabe had stomped around in a funk for a few weeks afterwards, unable to admit to himself why.) 

For now, though, his attention turns to the pile of papers on the floor.

"That's a lot of paperwork for four people," he says, taking a knee to examine some of it.

Jesse grins. "Word got around."

"I only told, like, two people! I swear!" Prithi says, holding up her hands.

"Turns out I'm not the only one who trusts you more than they trust Overwatch," Valdez says as Gabe shuffles through the paperwork he's holding. He finds forms for Valdez, Shiga, and Prithi, but also a bunch of other agents: Riemann, Yong, the Newton twins, Amirali, Domingo, March. Even Bennett's daughter is in here; Gabe wonders if he's going to be happy about that, or if he even knows yet. It's not an insignificant number of people.

Strike Commander Morrison's going to have a fucking heart attack. It's going to be _amazing_.

*

"So how do you feel about Shiga's offer? An island getaway?" Gabe asks Jesse that night, propped up on his knees and elbows above Jesse's torso, the question sneaking out amidst the kisses he's pressing to Jesse's face, his neck, his chest.

Jesse makes a thoughtful noise, and Gabe pauses the kissing to look up at his face. "Didn't think you'd be much interested in that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" Gabe rests his chin on Jesse's chest, the soft hair there tickling even through his own goatee.

"You know--the beach. Sun, sand, not doing very much. _Relaxing_."

"I can relax!"

Jesse gives him a skeptical look.

"I _can_! I'll put on some swim trunks, lie on the beach, finally get to that stack of books you keep telling me I should read."

"The stack _has_ gotten pretty big."

"I don't know when you find time to read so much," Gabe grumbles. "And you didn't actually answer my question. What do _you_ think?"

Jesse shrugs. "Probably a little humid for my tastes, but it sounds like it could be nice? You'll be there, and we could both use a break, even just for a little bit." He lifts his right hand and begins to run his fingers through Gabe's hair, across Gabe's scalp.

Gabe closes his eyes, leans into the touch and doesn't try to stifle the satisfied noise that bubbles up from somewhere deep in his chest. He stays like that for a minute, just breathing and feeling Jesse's hand on him, wanting to never be anywhere else. Then he says, not opening his eyes, not daring to look at Jesse, "You know, you don't _have_ to stay with me, once you're out."

Jesse's hand in his hair goes still. After a couple long moments, he asks, his voice mostly even, "Do you not want me to come with you?"

Gabe's eyes fly open. "Of course I do."

"And I want to go with you. _Of course_." Jesse tugs Gabe over sideways so he's tucked up under Jesse's left shoulder, his head resting on Jesse's chest so he can hear his heartbeat. "For the longest time, I thought it was Blackwatch that felt like home, but it's not. It's you."

Under his cheek, Gabe hears Jesse's heart speed up.

"Ana said you would leave without me," Gabe says, knowing he shouldn't but unable to stop himself.

Jesse stiffens. "She said she wouldn't say anything," he says, seemingly to himself. "We don't need to have this argument again. It doesn't matter, because you're leaving."

"You would have," Gabe says. If just the idea of it happening had floored him when Ana had told him, actually knowing that Jesse would have done it knocks the breath out of him entirely. He feels a little like his entire world has shifted on its axis.

"It would have been a last resort. I wouldn't have been happy about it." Jesse sighs, and Gabe's head rises and falls with the movement of his chest. "But--you can't expect me to have stood by and watched while you slowly drove yourself into the ground, Gabe. I wouldn't expect you to do that for me--you'd try to help for as long as you could take it, and then you'd get out while you still could."

_I'd go down in flames for you_ , Gabe finds himself thinking, unbidden, but he knows that's not the point. Instead, he says, "That's not what I've been doing."

"You can lie to yourself all you want, but it won't change the facts."

Gabe closes his eyes again, takes a couple of deep breaths.

"It's all a moot point now," Jesse says, his voice quiet and a little bit concerned. "You're leaving, and we don't need to worry about it." He pauses. "You know that I love you, right?" 

Gabe nods against his chest, and Jesse's left hand comes up to rub at the spot in Gabe's shoulder where the knot forms when he gets stressed.

"Let's just go on our island getaway, see what happens."

Gabe tips his head up to smile at Jesse, then climbs back on top of him to kiss him again.

"You know," Gabe says between kisses, "This is our last night in this terrible old bed."

Jesse laughs. "I almost said I was gonna miss it, but that's a god damned lie." He stares up at Gabe, a sly look on his face. "Seems like we ought to give it a going-away present, though. What were you thinking?"

"Nothing too fancy," Gabe murmurs. "I've got to go resign tomorrow morning, and we'll have plenty of time for fancy on our island getaway." He shifts his weight to one elbow, his free hand tentatively trailing its way down Jesse's chest.

He pauses when he reaches Jesse's waistband. "This okay?" he asks. He can already feel Jesse's cock straining to escape the front of his boxers, brushing up against Gabe's own with each twitch and movement, but he has to ask.

Jesse nods at him, wide-eyed. "Yeah," he says. "It's--yeah."

Gabe looks at him again, and when he doesn't say anything further, Gabe rolls back down onto the bed.

Jesse groans.

"What's up?"

"Besides the sudden, excruciating lack of your dick?" Jesse rolls to face Gabe. "Nothing's _wrong_. Everything is great, really. I... I was worried for a minute that you were gonna be mad at me. It'd be funny, wouldn't it, if we made it through all those fights and I lost you here."

"You know that _I_ love _you_ , right?" Gabe waits until Jesse nods to continue. "Our arguments were never about me being mad at you. Mad at a lot of other things, maybe, but not at you."

"Didn't feel like that sometimes," Jesse says quietly.

"I'm sorry," Gabe says, leaning his head forward to brush his nose against Jesse's.

"I know. Me too." Jesse lets out a deep breath, looks at Gabe with bright eyes. "Now, where were we?"

"We can just sleep, if you want."

"You kidding? We've only got one last night in this bed, I'm not going to waste it on something as silly as 'sleep'."

So Gabe takes him at his word, grins at him, reaches down between them to free his own dick from the confines of his boxers while Jesse wiggles out of his. Gabe reaches out and grabs Jesse in his fist, pumps once or twice up and down his length, watching the way Jesse's eyelids flutter, the little growl that escapes from his throat. 

Gabe kisses at his throat, and Jesse makes the noise again.

He swipes his thumb up over the tip of Jesse's cock, kissing from Jesse's throat to his chin to his mouth as he does so. When Jesse kisses back desperately, licking into Gabe's mouth, biting at his lower lip, Gabe pulls back, raising his hand to his lips and licking the pre-cum from his fingers, not breaking eye contact.

"Fuck, Gabe," Jesse murmurs. He reaches down to touch Gabe's cock, but Gabe preempts him, palming both of them together and stroking, up, down, up, down, in rhythm with Jesse's hips. It's a little slower than Gabe would normally go, but it seems like exactly what Jesse needs, and that turns Gabe on too. He relishes the way Jesse's hard cock slides against his own, all soft skin and tense heat, and the way Jesse repeats his name like a prayer. Jesse clings to him with both hands, the delicate pads of his metal fingers pressing white marks into the skin of Gabe's torso while the fingers of his other hand twist themselves into Gabe's hair.

They're both closer than Gabe realizes--Jesse bites out his name and comes, hot across Gabe's fist and his cock, and that's enough to push him over the edge as well, his own orgasm washing over him like a wave as he finishes stroking Jesse through his.

They stay there for a moment, sticky and entangled, breathing hard, Jesse's sweaty forehead resting lightly against Gabe's. 

Jesse smiles at him. "I'd say that's a damn good send-off," he says, and Gabe laughs. He can worry about the future in the morning. For now, there's this.

*

Gabe stands outside the door of Jack's office the next morning, hesitating. He's got on as many pieces of clothing as he could find with the Blackwatch insignia on them (never let it be said that he isn't at least a little petty) and he's holding his paperwork, plus the paperwork for all the agents leaving with him. All told, it's ended up being more than half of Blackwatch.

Jesse had offered to come with him--for moral support or to spit on Strike Commander Morrison's desk, Gabe wasn't sure--but Gabe knows that this is something he has to do himself.

There's no reason to be nervous. You don't get nervous, you get ready: the Blackwatch mantra. He has all the appropriate paperwork, all appropriately filled out, and he's _good_ at letting Strike-Commander Morrison yell at him. He's ready for whatever Jack can throw at him. He can do this.

He doesn't knock.

Jack is sitting behind his desk, talking to a couple of agents Gabe vaguely recognizes--Hansen, maybe? and Oxton, that one Gabe knows. When he looks up and spots Gabe, Jack grimaces, then asks the agents to come back later. They give Gabe a curious look as they file out past him, and then he and Jack are alone.

"Reyes," Jack says, the grimace gone from his face but still lingering in his voice, "To what do I owe the pleasure? I assume this has something to do with the rumors I'm hearing of unrest in the Blackwatch ranks."

"I'm here to submit my resignation," Gabe says, striding forward to put the paperwork he's holding on Jack's desk. Jack's mouth drops open. "And to inform you of the resignations of a number of agents under my command, whose resignations I accepted before submitting my own."

"You're leaving? You can't just _leave_."

"I can, and I'm going to." Gabe steps back from the desk and stands with his feet apart and his hands folded behind his back, looking somewhere just past Jack's shoulder. "The paperwork's all there, and I'm walking out of here with or without your approval."

Jack shuffles through the paperwork. "This is...you're taking most of Blackwatch with you. I expected McCree, maybe one or two of your other strike team acolytes, but this? This is a fucking _exodus_. What are you going to _do_ with them all?"

"What am I going to--right, yes, I'm _literally taking them all with me_. We're going to open an artisanal coffee shop called Blackwatch Brews, gonna serve the best goddamn coffee Toronto's ever had."

Jack stops reading through the paperwork, gives Gabe an unamused look. "You leave with this many covert operatives, Reyes, I'm going to assume that something's up."

"Maybe we all decided we were fed up with cleaning up Overwatch's shit," Gabe says, keeping his voice flat and his eyes focused on the wall behind Jack. "Where they're going is none of my business, because I'm not their boss anymore."

"Okay, so you're _not_ going off to form your own covert ops group with even less oversight than you have now. Got it." In his peripheral vision, Gabe sees Jack look up from the paperwork and fix him with a thoughtful look. "Where are _you_ going?"

"You know I'm not going to tell you that," Gabe says, finally meeting Jack's gaze.

"Somewhere with McCree, though, right?"

Gabe nods despite himself, and Jack laughs. It's a brittle sound.

"I'm glad for you," Jack says. "I really am." It does not sound like it. The look he gives Gabe is hurt, and Gabe meets it plainly, with no apologies. "What am I going to do without you?"

"You'll do the same thing, with or without me--your job. You'll have to find somebody else to yell at, but I'm sure you've got no shortage of candidates." He gives Jack a brief, slightly sarcastic smile. "In terms of Blackwatch, you'll need to shuffle the strike teams a little bit, now that you've got fewer agents. I know you're not asking for my opinion and that I've got no right to give it anymore," Gabe gestures at his paperwork, "But I'd replace me with Bennett and give Bennett's old strike team to Edwards. Or you can give everything to your man Ovisker; it feels like he's running the place anyway."

Jack's eyebrows knit together. "Who?"

"Ovisker? Saul Ovisker? The guy you assigned to Blackwatch to dole out all your dirty-work missions?" 

Jack's expression is still confused, and there is suddenly a sinking feeling in the pit of Gabe's stomach.

"You sent him over, what, a year and a half, two years ago? Your name was all over his transfer papers, Jack." Gabe comes around Jack's desk, logs into Jack's computer, pulls up the orders from his mail archive. Jack squints at it, then snaps his fingers in recognition.

"Right, Ovisker, I remember him. You _requested_ him." He elbows Gabe aside and pulls up the same paperwork in his own mail archive--but this copy has Gabe's name everywhere that Gabe's had Jack's name.

Gabe swears quietly. "He's been sending us out to do kidnapping, sabotage, assassinations--I've _lost agents_ on what I thought were missions _you_ wanted, and now you're telling me--" His gaze falls on his resignation papers again, and he goes silent. This isn't really his problem anymore.

"I saw the mission reports," Jack says, staring past Gabe. "I thought they were all things that you--"

"What kind of monster do you think I am?" Gabe says quietly. Jack won't meet his eyes.

*

Back at Gabe's quarters, Jesse looks up when Gabe enters. Worry is etched across his face, and he's obviously been pacing. "How did it go?"

Gabe crosses the room quickly, pulls Jesse into a hug and holds on tight. "It's good we're getting out of here," he says into Jesse's shoulder, and Jesse holds him tighter.

*

It's not until they're on the plane that Gabe finally allows himself to relax a little. They'd left Overwatch with minimal fuss, all things considered. Several of Ana's best agents had taken Ovisker into custody, where he'd proceeded to swear that he'd never talk. And then Gabe and Jesse had made the rounds, saying their goodbyes, offering handshakes and hugs and best wishes, redirecting as best they can the questions about where they're going and what they're doing after. Their relationship is somewhere between "open secret" and "just out in the open" in Blackwatch; in Overwatch proper, it is, with one or two notable exceptions, still secret and technically against the rules.

Not that the rules matter all that much anymore, but Gabe's pretty sure it's going to be a little while before he stops constantly looking over his shoulder.

Jesse had said more goodbyes than he had; Gabe hadn't realized how isolated he'd let himself become in Blackwatch until he'd tried to figure out who he needed to tell goodbye. Ana had hugged them both; Torbjorn had wished them well; Angela Ziegler had made them promise to keep in touch; Reinhardt had, unexpectedly, cried; and Jack, ever the sentimental fool, had hung back and flashed Gabe a salute from across the hangar as they'd headed out. Now, though, they're on a plane. Their island getaway awaits.

The flight attendant offers them a smile and complimentary cocktails, and Gabe reaches out to grab Jesse's hand on the armrest between them. Jesse looks startled for a moment, peering in confusion at Gabe. They don't do public displays of affection, they just _don't_. It's one of the things they both knew going into this--their relationship within the military structure of Overwatch had needed to be a secret, and so no matter how much Gabe has ever wanted to offer casual touches to his touch-starved partner, to offer a shoulder to lean on or a reassuring touch on the small of his back, he hasn't been able to. They'd had a mission once where they'd gone undercover as a couple (a stretch for them, to be sure) and had been able to kiss each other in public, had been able to do something as simple as hold hands in front of other people, and it had felt revelatory.

Now, Jesse's looking between Gabe's face and their fingers intertwined on the armrest like he's having the same kind of revelation.

"Well," Jesse says, his voice warm as he leans close, "I was gonna suggest we try to join the mile-high club, but this is pretty good too."

"I swear to god," Gabe says back, with no real malice, "If you get us kicked off this expensive, last-minute flight, you are gonna get left in Newark during our layover."

"Dunno," Jesse says with a thoughtful grin, "I've heard some interesting things about New Jersey."

Gabe shakes his head and smiles.

It's a long flight. After hour two, Jesse maneuvers himself and the armrests, tucks himself up against Gabe's side as best he can, and falls asleep. He's snoring gently, and Gabe presses a kiss to his hair and is quietly jealous. He wants to sleep--he ought to sleep a little, because the day already feels like it's been long and it's only going to get longer--but that requires him to fully let his guard down, and that still feels like a bridge too far. Instead, he reads the book that Jesse had tucked into his carry-on for him, holding it with one arm while Jesse's sleeping form occupies his other. Gabe doesn't actually know anything about the book, just that it had won a Hugo a couple years back and that Jesse had enjoyed it. It's actually pretty good, but Gabe still finds himself having to reread some pages several times as he gets distracted eyeing the other passengers. There's the couple two rows up who are obviously on their honeymoon, the businesswoman across the aisle who keeps getting drawn into conversation with the omnic next to her despite obviously wanting to be left in peace to whatever she's doing on her tablet, the frazzled mother diagonally in front of him with a pudgy baby in her arms that won't stop waving at Gabe. 

He's making silly faces at the baby when he notices the same blond man making a third trip forward to the airplane restroom, obviously scanning the crowd but trying his best to look like he isn't. The man catches Gabe's eye almost by accident as Gabe has his tongue out and his nose scrunched up and the baby is giggling wildly at him; all three of them seem startled when the man makes eye contact. Gabe is more alert now, and he notices the blond man pass them in the aisle twice more before they finally make it to Newark.

He nudges Jesse awake when they touch down and is on high-alert as they traipse through customs, making their way to the gate for their connecting flight. Gabe's trying not to be paranoid, but he thinks he keeps spotting that same blond man as they cross the airport, always just out of his line of sight. He's probably being paranoid. He hasn't slept enough, and there are plenty of blond men around; what are the odds that one particular guy is following them? 

Still, Gabe does a quick mental risk assessment, just in case. Assuming that airport security in Switzerland did their jobs, the man wouldn't have anything on him more dangerous than Gabe himself is carrying--which, admittedly, isn't a lot. He figures that if they're being tailed, whoever is doing the tailing probably wants them alive, or at the very least won't act against them in such a public place. Gabe, meanwhile, has years of covert ops experience and no such qualms, which presumably gives him a leg up in any potential confrontation. If he can lure the man out--

"You look like you're planning something," Jesse says, interrupting his thoughts. "Whatever it is, I want in."

Gabe pauses. His first instinct is--always is--to protect Jesse, to keep him out of harm's way if he doesn't absolutely need to be _in_ harm's way. But that instinct only worked when he was Jesse McCree's commanding officer; as partners, Gabe doesn't get to make that kind of decision for him. 

"Do you remember that mission we did in Thailand?" Gabe asks.

"Which one? Pak Kret or Bangkok?"

Gabe catches sight of the blond man again, clearly enough that he can confirm that it's the same guy from the plane. "Pak Kret," he says. He proceeds to surreptitiously point out the man, explain how the man has been seemingly tailing them since Zurich, and outline a possible course of action.

"It's possible that it's nothing, that I'm overreacting," Gabe says with an uneasy shrug.

"But your instincts haven't steered us wrong before," Jesse counters. "I'll trust them any day."

Gabe thinks about how the bottom had dropped out of his stomach in Jack's office, looking at the forged paperwork Jack had with his name written all over it. He's not sure if his instincts aren't nearly as infallible as he'd thought or if he's just gotten out of practice at listening to them.

"So, the plan?" he says, waiting for Jesse to repeat it back to him.

"You head into that restroom across the way, making sure that Blondie sees you go. You wait in there to see if he follows you, and if he does, I give it five minutes with no contact before I head in after you. I'll ping your phone if he heads for me instead of you. Sound about right?"

Gabe nods.

"Just like Pak Kret," Jesse says.

(Gabe probably ought to stop to think about how his life had gotten to the point where he has a _good track record_ of luring people into restrooms for mission purposes, but there's really no time.)

"Be safe," Jesse says, and Gabe's heart skips a beat, "And try not to break too much stuff. You can probably still send the bill to Morrison, but I'd imagine getting him to pay it would be even more of a hassle than it was with Blackwatch."

"I'll do my best," Gabe says. He stands, then realizes abruptly--he doesn't want this guy to impinge on the new freedom he's been feeling, doesn't want him to _win_ , so, a little recklessly, he leans back down to press a kiss to Jesse's mouth before he goes.

*

As expected, Gabe's in the restroom for all of two minutes before the blond man joins him. Gabe's hidden himself in a stall--the only occupied one in the restroom, he knows--and then there's a knock on the stall door and a gruff voice calling him sir. Gabe doesn't respond, just backs away from the stall door slightly so that when the man kicks it open expecting resistance, he meets none and is off-balance from the start. Gabe lunges out while the man is staggering forward and puts his shoulder square into the man's chest, shoving both of them backwards across the restroom until they're up against the counter, the breath knocked from the man with a very satisfying noise by the force of the impact.

The man at the urinal across the room glances over his shoulder at the commotion, then turns back to his own business.

The blond man takes a swing at Gabe. He doesn't manage to catch Gabe's jaw directly but still clips him, and Gabe reels back as the man springs forward, throwing (and mostly landing) a series of punches that mean business. Gabe finally dodges one, catches the man's arm and twists him around, using the momentum to drive them back towards the sinks, where he slams the man's head against the counter and holds him in place with his own body.

Gabe leans down close and says, his voice flat and full of anger, "What do you want from me, and who are you working for?"

The man gives Gabe a nasty grin, full of bloodied teeth. "You took down Ovisker, but you can't take down all of us," he says, struggling against Gabe's grip.

Gabe hits the man's head against the counter again, and he yelps. "You don't get to come after me and mine without consequences, motherfucker. Whatever you know about me, you ought to know _that_."

(Two sinks down, the man from the urinal runs the water, washing his hands. He doesn't even look over at them.)

Gabe resettles his weight on top of the man. "Gonna ask you again: what do you want, and who do you work for?"

"Go fuck yourself," the man spits. "You're not going to stop us by beating up one of us in an airport."

"No, but it certainly can't _hurt_ ," Gabe says, and he drags the man back vertical and delivers a knockout punch.

Urinal Guy finally makes eye contact. Gabe is aware of how he must look right now--beat up, a little bloody, and holding an unconscious stranger.

"He started it," Gabe tells the man, who looks thoughtful for a moment before shrugging and heading for the restroom's exit, leaving Gabe to contemplate what to do with his unconscious prize.

"I wouldn't go in there, if I were you," Gabe hears Urinal Guy say, and he looks up to see Jesse standing in the doorway of the restroom. It didn't feel like it had been five minutes, but it must have been.

"Jesus," Jesse says, quickly crossing the floor to where Gabe is standing and taking Gabe's face in his hands to examine his injuries. "Are you okay?"

Gabe waves off his concerns and sets the guy down on the counter. Jesse scans the room, spots the one security camera on the ceiling, and moves to stand between it and Gabe while Gabe starts rifling through the blond man's pockets. Guy's not carrying much, but he _does_ have a wallet, from which, in his apparent haste to follow Gabe and Jesse out of Switzerland, he seems to have forgotten to remove both his Overwatch and personal IDs.

Gabe holds his findings up for Jesse to see (still reasonably out of line of sight of the security camera), and Jesse reads them aloud: "Miles Spencer, Agent of Overwatch. _Jesus_."

Gabe gets his phone out, takes photos of the IDs before replacing them in the wallet and tucking it back into Spencer's pocket. He also takes a photo of Spencer's face, and then he calls Ana Amari's personal number.

"Ah, Gabriel," she says, sounding a little like Gabe's call had woken her up. "Rethinking your retirement so soon?"

"What do you know about an Agent Miles Spencer?"

Gabe can hear her frown. "Miles? I think we've been out on a mission or two. He seems competent, friendly enough. Why?"

"Agent Miles Spencer tailed us on our flight out of Zurich and just tried to beat me up."

Ana swears. "Are you certain?"

"I've got him and his Overwatch ID card both in front of me now. I can send you visual proof, but...he made it sound like he and Ovisker are part of the same, larger organization, so I'm not sure I trust Overwatch's messaging system right now. Do you have a personal address I can send these photos to?"

Once the photos have been sent and Ana has confirmed she's received them, she blows out a long sigh and asks, "What are you going to do with him?"

Gabe looks over at Jesse, who shrugs. "I was hoping you'd have some trustworthy agents nearby who could come get him."

"I'd have said _Spencer_ was a trustworthy agent, Gabriel. I'm not sure I'm qualified to make that call."

*

They agree that Jesse and Gabe will find a way to keep Spencer subdued until Ana and Reinhardt, two Overwatch agents who Gabe trusts without question, can arrive and take Spencer into custody. It turns out that the way to keep Spencer subdued in the meantime is to take advantage of airport security. Spencer had _attacked_ Gabe, it's on the security footage and everything! Gabe gives a statement, and the airport authorities are more than happy to hold onto Spencer until the Overwatch agents arrive--less paperwork they have to do, in the end. Gabe uses his Official Voice and tells them to only remand Spencer into Captain Amari's custody. Then he and Jesse are, presumably, free and clear.

Gabe makes his way back to their gate, drops his carry-on, and takes a heavy seat. He feels exhausted; there's still something like five hours left in their layover, but there's no way he's going to get any sleep now. 

Jesse had excused himself while Gabe had been dealing with the authorities, and while isn't sure what he'd gone to do, it's a little odd that he's not back yet. Given the violent confrontation Gabe had just gotten done with, he finds himself worrying a little bit--not that Jesse can't more than handle himself, but Gabe doesn't want him to have to. They're a team. If Jesse's dealing with something, he ought to be there as backup.

Then Jesse shows up, grinning. "So it turns out," he tells Gabe, taking a seat next to him, "If you or your loved one get beat up at an airport, the people at that airport will bend over backwards to try to help you."

Gabe eyes him suspiciously. "...what did you do?"

"We've been bumped up to a flight that leaves sooner." Jesse hands Gabe a set of freshly-printed tickets. "We leave in less than an hour, _and_ I've been personally assured that our luggage will arrive there with us."

Gabe examines the tickets he's been handed. They do indeed leave in less than an hour, and their next layover is a much more reasonable length too.

"Oh," Jesse says suddenly, as though he's just now remembering, "If anyone asks, your mom's real sick and we're on our way to visit her." (Gabe raises an eyebrow.) "And you're my husband. If anyone asks." (The other eyebrow goes up.) "So, uh, mazel tov, I guess."

"This setup seems needlessly complicated," Gabe says, straight-faced.

"I controlled for some sympathetic variables, husband-of-mine." Jesse, Gabe notices, is blushing a little. "It's just good, persuasive fieldwork. _You_ taught me that."

Gabe finally lets his mouth quirk up into a smile. "I like the sound of that."

"What, 'persuasive fieldwork'?"

"No, 'husband'," Gabe says softly, and he's pretty sure he'll never forget the quick, quiet way Jesse draws in a breath at that.

*

The flight to their next layover is uneventful. Neither of them sleep, but Jesse sits between Gabe and the aisle, and Gabe lets his head rest on Jesse's shoulder. The layover is uneventful too--they ping Shiga, to make sure he knows they're going to be getting in early--and they're escorted onto the final flight, to Hawaii, by a sympathetic flight crew who assure them that if there's anything they need, all they have to do is ask. Gabe thanks them and keeps his head down; the easiest way to get caught out in a lie like the one Jesse's constructed for them is to draw attention to themselves.

Gabe tries and fails to read more of the book he'd started on the first flight. Partway through, he excuses himself to the restroom, stands with his hands on the edge of the tiny sink and forces himself to breathe, counts as he inhales and exhales: four in through his nose, seven held in his lungs, eight back out again through his mouth. He keeps his eyes firmly on where his fingers are curling around the edge of the sink, afraid to look at his own face in the mirror and see how badly beat up he is. 

He keeps counting.

He looks up sharply at a knock on the restroom door. "Occupied," he manages. Jesse's voice filters through the door, indistinctly, in return. As Gabe turns to open it, there are more voices outside, a flight attendant telling Jesse that the restroom is in use and can he return to his seat, please?

"My husband's in there," Gabe hears Jesse say. "We're the ones from Newark? I just want to check on him. He's had a bad day." A pause, the flight attendant saying something Gabe can't quite hear and Jesse responding; they've obviously stepped away from the door to have a conversation. Then Jesse is back, saying, "Gabe, honey, you okay?"

Gabe opens the door. Jesse assures the flight attendant that they'll only be a minute and then steps inside. The space really wasn't built for two people, and it's a wonder that Jesse manages to get the door closed behind him. 

"You disappeared," Jesse says, touching Gabe's shoulder, his chest, his cheek, each touch obviously as reassuring to Jesse as it is to Gabe. "After how the rest of today has gone, I got worried."

Gabe shakes his head. "Nothing wrong, just me."

Jesse puts his hands on either side of Gabe's face, pulls him forward and kisses his forehead, and Gabe lets his eyes fall closed at the touch of Jesse's lips.

"You gonna be okay?" Jesse asks quietly, resting his chin against Gabe's forehead.

Gabe nods. "Don't know why I thought leaving would be easy."

Jesse laughs. "Welcome to the party, sweetheart." He pulls Gabe close, holds him tight. "We'll get through this. Not gonna let anybody take you away from me." He pulls away a little, gives Gabe a mischievous look. "Since I'm here, any thoughts on that thing you were going to leave me in New Jersey for?"

"I can't take you anywhere," Gabe says, his voice fond even as he does the risk calculation--they're already over the Pacific, over halfway to their destination, and Jesse's sob story has presumably won them a lot of good will. What could it hurt? He nods at Jesse.

"You also can't leave me in New Jersey now," Jesse counters, sinking to his knees and making easy work of Gabe's belt. The sight of Jesse like this, here, is enough to get him half-hard already, and the way Jesse looks up at him and grins as he goes for Gabe's dick is enough to give him a full-body shiver and get him the rest of the way there. Jesse runs his tongue up the length of Gabe's dick once, not breaking eye contact, before taking the whole thing into his mouth in one swift movement.

Gabe just manages to bite back a moan. The one tiny part of his brain that's not currently throwing up sparks reminds him of where they are, how easily he'd heard Jesse's voice through the door, how close everyone is outside. He shoves a fist in front of his mouth and concentrates on keeping himself quiet.

Jesse looks up at him, eyes sparkling, pace not slowing, and it's all Gabe can do to keep his hips from bucking forward, especially as Jesse does that thing Gabe likes with his tongue.

Jesse is very good at this, and Gabe is nearly finished, lost in the soft, warm feeling of Jesse's mouth, when there's a tentative knock at the door.

"Sir?" The flight attendant sounds something between worried and annoyed.

Jesse pulls up off Gabe's dick, makes a small, placating noise at Gabe before standing and turning to the door. "We'll just be a minute," he says, the rough note in his voice presumably only obvious if you know to listen for it. The flight attendant says nothing for a moment, then obviously decides that the confluence of factors Gabe had evaluated earlier are going to work in their favor and tells him to hurry up.

Jesse drops back to his knees.

Gabe puts a hand on Jesse's head, tilting his own head and raising an eyebrow in a silent question. Jesse nods back, a lazy smile on his lips, and he opens his mouth to take in Gabe's cock again. With Jesse's approval, Gabe is more active this time, thrusting his hips forward into Jesse's waiting mouth, a hand curled in Jesse's hair to help him fuck Jesse's face in the rhythm he needs. Both of them are trying now to stay silent, Jesse gripping at Gabe's hips with a sort of desperate urgency, Gabe pressing his fist against his own closed mouth. He comes, quickly and quietly, and Jesse swallows all of it. He gives Gabe's dick one last, indulgent swipe with his tongue before standing, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and kissing Gabe gently.

Gabe takes a moment to put himself back together before digging around in his pockets. He's pretty sure he's got a breath mint somewhere.

"You should probably look a little distressed when we go out," Jesse says, leaning in to whisper in Gabe's ear.

Oh, right. Gabe had managed to forget for a moment about the danger they were maybe in. _That_ quickly turns his breathless smile to a scowl he doesn't have to fake, and he makes his way back to their seats behind Jesse.

(The flight attendant, whose voice Gabe now recognizes, gives them a doubtful look, but does not press the issue.)

When they're seated again, Jesse slings an arm around Gabe's shoulder. "Not gonna let anybody take you away from me," he repeats. Gabe slouches into the touch, and they stay like that for the rest of the flight.

*

Shiga meets them at the airport, gives both of them a hug. Gabe's not sure what his own face is doing, but given the amount of terror on Shiga's face, it's probably nothing good. Still, Shiga recovers admirably. "Welcome to the other side of the world," he tells them both. "I assume you've got bags we need to pick up?"

"Yes and no," Jesse says. As if on cue, the airline staff brings their bags out personally, handing them to Jesse and telling him that _we all hope your mother-in-law gets better, sir_. 

Shiga, to his credit, does not ask any questions about this, just says loudly, "We'd better get you to the hospital. She'll want to see you." Their bags get loaded into his vehicle, and once they're safely away from the airport, he says, "So it seems like I missed some excitement."

Jesse explains while Gabe scans the traffic they're passing through, trying to see if anyone is still following them. He hadn't noticed anybody else once they'd left Newark, and he's hoping that moving their flights up and leaving Spencer in custody has deterred any further interference in their lives. When he'd turned his phone back on at the airport, he'd found a series of texts from Ana: Spencer is in custody, and Reinhardt had only jostled him a little bit; Winston and Athena are running through the Overwatch and Blackwatch rosters, trying to find common points between Ovisker and Spencer, things they can extrapolate and use to question more agents; she is doing her best to keep Gabe and Jesse out of this any further, but she'll try to keep them updated. It's actually pretty reassuring. He trusts Ana to keep them safe.

As the scenery moves past outside the window, Gabe lets his eyelids drift closed, just for a moment, and then Jesse is shaking him awake.

When Shiga had said that his family had 'a place', Gabe had imagined a house somewhere with a spare room where they could crash. Where they are instead seems to be a resort? It's on the small side, but definitely a resort. Shiga leads them past the front desk and two separate swimming pools to a little bungalow and presents them both with keycards.

"I usually sleep for about twenty-four hours straight when I come visit, and I haven't even beaten anyone up," Shiga tells them, eyeing the bruises Gabe knows have formed on his face. "Ping me when you've slept off the time zones, or if you need anything--anything at all."

Jesse is already keying into the bungalow and depositing their luggage, but Gabe is still boggling at everything. "This is too generous," he says.

Shiga gives him a look. "Reyes, I lost track of how many times you've saved the lives of me and my friends. You could stay here for a year for free and we still wouldn't be close to even."

"I was just doing my job," Gabe protests, trying his best to sound gruff. 

"Get some sleep. If you really want to have this argument, we can have it when you look like you're not going to fall asleep before I've managed to make all of my salient points." Shiga smiles kindly at him and gives him a friendly shove inside, and Gabe closes the door between them.

Once inside, Gabe surveys their accommodations. It's set up studio-style, with pretty much everything in one large room: a little kitchen nook, a sofa and a vidscreen, a desk and some chairs, a small chest of drawers, and in the middle of everything, a king-sized bed. There's a sliding glass door that opens out onto a patio which in turn opens out onto the beach. There's also an interior door that leads into a nice bathroom with a pair of sinks and a wide, tiled wet room containing a shower and a tub. Apart from the standard amenities like towels and toiletries, they've also been provided with a basket of fruit and a set of plush bathrobes.

Staring into the bathroom at the shower, Gabe suddenly, acutely feels every grimy hour that he's been awake over the last forty-eight. He turns back to the room, where Jesse is already sprawled across the bed. "I think I'm going to shower," Gabe says, "Hopefully wash some of this travel off me."

Jesse raises his head to look at Gabe. "Want me to join you, darlin'?"

"Honestly, _darlin_ '," Gabe says, drawling the endearment back at Jesse in a teasingly serious way, "After everything that's happened today, I am too tired to even think about anything but actually getting clean right now."

"Okay." Jesse nods seriously, then says quietly, "Want me to join you?"

*

The water is hot, turned up all the way, and Gabe steps into the shower and just stands under the jet for a moment. It courses over his skin, the heat feeling good but also exposing what feels like a thousand aches and pains he'd managed to push down while they'd been traveling. He leans heavily with one shoulder up against the wall of the wet room, his eyes closed, taking stock. The SEP shit means the bruises will be mostly (if not entirely) faded tomorrow, but for now, he wants to stand here and not move for a little while.

Behind him, he hears the wet room door open and Jesse's voice reassuring him that he's here, then Jesse's arms slide around his waist and his torso presses up against Gabe's. Tension Gabe hadn't even known he was still holding eases itself out of his shoulders.

Jesse moves around in front of Gabe--an unexpected bonus to the shower setup: maneuvering room--and examines him, touching his fingers gently to Gabe's face, tracing the outlines of each of Gabe's bruises. It's just enough pressure to hurt, but done so tenderly that every press makes Gabe a little more breathless.

When Jesse is satisfied with his investigation, they move around each other, sweet and slow, each getting clean. Gabe leans over, lets Jesse shampoo his hair, fingers touching his scalp with all the sweetness he'd used for Gabe's bruises. Gabe returns the favor, running his hands through Jesse's long hair, closing his own eyes as he works the shampoo into a clean lather, relishing the way Jesse leans into the touch. 

Everything feels a little surreal, and even as they're doing the rest of their cleanliness routine, he keeps one hand on Jesse at all times. It's reassuring in a way that Gabe's not quite sure he can explain.

Eventually, the shower gets turned off, and Gabe towels off, pulls on a fresh pair of boxers, and crawls into bed. (It had surprised him, when he packed, how few items of clothing he owned that didn't have a Blackwatch insignia on them. They'll have to go shopping sometime in the next few days, because Gabe needs most of a new wardrobe.) Jesse gets the lights, closing the drapes against the midday sun, and then slides in next to Gabe. The bed is bigger than the one they're used to sharing, and Gabe is able to lie flat on his back and not touch Jesse at all--but that's not what he wants. He rolls close, and then pulls him even closer, throwing an arm over Jesse's torso and nuzzling into his neck.

Jesse laughs, a tired but delighted sound, and Gabe says _I love you_ into Jesse's neck and is almost immediately asleep.

*

Gabe wakes up feeling mostly rested. When he checks the clock, he honestly can't tell if he's been asleep for six hours or eighteen; the curtains are still drawn and the room is still mostly dark. Next to him in the bed, Jesse is still fast asleep.

He loves waking up next to Jesse, loves the slow moments where they can be together without needing to worry about anything. In a minute, there can be missions and deadlines and paperwork, but for this moment, there's just the two of them together in bed, the only two people in the universe who matter. It nearly makes up for the nights they have to spend apart. Gabe doesn't mind having to sleep apart when they're both out on missions, but when he has to send Jesse out on dangerous missions and wake up in a cold, empty bed--well.

They'd promised each other, when all this had started, that they wouldn't let their relationship affect their work. Gabe would treat Jesse like he was any other agent; Jesse deserved to succeed on his own (and he _would_ , Gabe knew), and it wouldn't have been fair to the other agent who had been assigned to the dangerous mission in his place. Jesse, for his part, would treat Gabe like any other agent too, like his _commander_. He couldn't prioritize Gabe in dangerous situations, even in matters of life and death; the mission was more important, was _always_ more important, than the two of them. 

He's pretty sure they'd managed to toe the line pretty well. (The strike team would definitely have said something if they hadn't; Valdez in particular would not stand for shit and had no qualms about approaching him when things went wrong.) They'd only slipped up once or twice: Gabe had called off the mission he'd been on when he found out Jesse had lost his arm, and Jesse had left the rest of the team once to pull Gabe from a collapsed building. 

It had worked for them for a long time--right up until it hadn't, Gabe realizes as he looks around the darkened room. He'd been trying to keep his relationship from affecting his work in all those arguments with Jesse, to the point where his attempts to be objective about the job had blinded him to the truth of it.

He still can't _believe_... The application with Jack's name all over it had come through when he and Jack had been having a particularly rough patch, Ana out on a mission for three months and the two of them not talking to each other by the end of the first month. If they'd just talked to each other, instead of each viewing Ovisker as a cudgel the other was wielding... He'd lost agents. People had _died_. And if he hadn't tried to leave, maybe he wouldn't have ever found out.

He'd spent so long trying to convince Jesse and himself that Blackwatch was normal, that its missions needed doing and that it needed him, that he didn't see that it wasn't and it didn't.

It strikes him suddenly that he's never going to have to send Jesse out on a dangerous mission again.

If he hadn't let his relationship affect his work, he wouldn't be here now, Jesse sleeping peacefully next to him. Jesse always jokes that Gabe had rescued him from a life of mistakes; Gabe realizes now that that's exactly what Jesse's done for him.

Gabe takes a minute to stare at Jesse, watching his chest rise and fall. He's spread across the king bed like a starfish, and he'd gone to sleep on his damp hair, which is now sticking up at any number of different angles. He's--Gabe's not naive enough to say that Jesse is _perfect_ , no matter how much he aches with it, neither of them are perfect and won't ever be--but Gabe loves every inch of him. Jesse's a heavy enough sleeper that he _could_ reach out if he wanted to, trace along the curve of his shoulder, the sweep of his collarbone, the broad expanse of his chest, the network of scars that spiderwebs above his metal arm. He knows each of those things intimately, has already committed them to memory, but every now and then it hits him again: these things are _his_ , because Jesse has chosen to be with him. Jesse has chosen _again_ to be with him, because it was one thing to choose at 26 when you were part of a covert ops organization that effectively limited the number of people in your social life; it was another to be 30 with the whole world stretched out in front of you and make the same decision. Gabe wants to be the man who deserves that decision. He's pretty sure he hasn't been lately.

Gabe leans over and kisses Jesse's forehead softly, and Jesse blinks awake. He gives Gabe a sleepy smile, tilts his head up and kisses him back.

"Aren't you a sight to wake up to," Jesse murmurs.

"Glad you think so, because you're stuck with me now, asshole," Gabe says affectionately. He lets his fingers trail along the path he'd imagined earlier, careful and reverent.

Jesse laughs. "I can think of worse ways to spend the rest of my life." He pulls Gabe down, kisses him slow and easy, keeps kissing him as the heat starts to prickle in Gabe's belly. Jesse tugs at Gabe's boxers, so Gabe slips them off while Jesse does the same with his own.

"We didn't unpack the lube, did we," Gabe says quietly against Jesse's mouth.

"I don't think we unpacked _anything_ when we got here. Wouldn't be averse to you going to find some, though."

So Gabe climbs out of the bed reluctantly, digs through a couple of suitcases to find the lube. He glances back at the bed a couple of times to make sure he hasn't lost Jesse yet, but every time, Jesse's eyes are on him, full of lust as he lazily strokes his own cock.

Lube in hand, Gabe returns to the bed. He kneels between Jesse's spread legs. Jesse still hasn't stopped looking at Gabe, still hasn't stopped touching himself. Gabe opens the lube bottle, waits until Jesse's eyes go half-closed in anticipation, then hoists him up by his thighs and leans in to tongue gently at his hole. He laps at him, long strokes around the rim, teasing darts just inside. Jesse gasps in surprise, grasps for Gabe's shoulders in an attempt to keep him there---and Gabe does stay there for a little bit, each breathless moan of pleasure his tongue coaxes out of Jesse going straight to his own dick. 

Eventually, he lowers Jesse back to the bed. He _actually_ puts lube onto his fingers now, rubs it for a second to warm it up, presses carefully into Jesse's waiting ass with one finger, then two.

"Fuck, Gabe," Jesse grits out. "Please--please."

"What do you want?" Gabe asks. "Tell me."

Jesse is practically writhing on the bed, his hips bearing down on Gabe's fingers needily, fucking himself on Gabe's hand.

"I need to feel you," Jesse says. "Please."

Gabe is happy to oblige. He slicks up his dick with his free hand, then pulls his fingers out of Jesse so he can slowly, carefully work his cock in instead. Jesse watches him, pupils blown, biting his lower lip as Gabe moves into him, nodding desperate confirmation every time Gabe pauses. It doesn't take long for Gabe to be sunk all the way into him.

"So good for me," Gabe murmurs, watching the pleased blush rise in Jesse's cheeks. "So good."

He moves his hips--out, in, out, in--watching the way Jesse's whole body seems to shake when Gabe's dick presses all the way into him.

He thrusts again, picking up a rhythm, losing himself a little in the feeling of Jesse around him, hot and tight. Jesse is touching himself in time with Gabe's rhythm, and he squeezes his eyes shut and comes pretty quickly, breathing hard as he splashes up across his own stomach.

Gabe slows his pace and then stops, his hips resting flush with Jesse's ass, his dick twitching a little inside Jesse despite his best efforts. It's an unspoken question, one that Jesse answers almost immediately: his eyes fly open, and he hisses, "Don't _stop_."

Gabe picks up his pace again, fucking into Jesse hard and fast. "Jesse, god, Jesse," he moans. Then Jesse throws his head back and his ass is clenching around Gabe, and Gabe's coming too, the force and suddenness of it surprising him a little.

They're still for a long moment, and then Jesse says, mirth in his voice, _The first day of the rest of our lives_ , and Gabe cannot stop laughing.

*

When they finally make it out of bed, they make themselves presentable and ping Shiga. He meets them outside the bungalow, and he and Jesse compare texts from the team while Gabe looks on in amusement.

Prithi has sent them both an ungodly number of photos of her and a young woman who looks vaguely familiar to Gabe.

"Her girlfriend," Shiga says.

"You met her at the holiday party, I think," Jesse adds. While Gabe doesn't doubt that he's right, that whole party is a blur in his memory--he and Morrison had just spent a week at the UN negotiating the Overwatch budget, and his mind had been, regrettably, elsewhere that night.

The texts from Stef Valdez are a little sparser, a photo of a sunrise over the mountains out a window, another of a very cuddly-looking beagle curled up with an older man who looks a lot like Stef.

Both Prithi and Stef have texted that they miss everybody, and there's a sudden, sharp pang in Gabe's chest.

Neither Jesse nor Shiga have heard from Edwards, but it turns out that Gabe has, a few texts he'd managed to somehow ignore while scrolling through Ana's messages at the airport. The first one reads _it's getting crazy here, what the hell did you guys do_ , and the second reads _maybe I should have left with all of you after all, ha ha ha_.

"Weird," Shiga says, staring at Gabe's phone with his face screwed up in concentration like it's going to help.

"Maybe we don't add him to our new group chat," Jesse says carefully.

On cue, Gabe's phone pings. _You have been added to a new group chat: Got Out While The Gettin Was Good._ He watches as Jesse and Shiga stage the perfect selfie, the two of them in the foreground, palm trees and clear blue sky in the background. His phone pings again when Jesse sends it to the new chat.

Gabe sends the chat the photo _he'd_ surreptitiously taken, Jesse and Shiga from a much less perfect angle, Jesse's phone held out in front of them as they posed for the selfie they'd just posted.

The next photo the chat gets is of Gabe, scowling mock-angrily at the camera.

Once everyone is sufficiently caught up, Shiga takes them to get some food and to introduce them to his grandmother, the proprietor of the place.

When Shiga introduces them, Jesse holds his hat between his hands and Gabe does his best to seem as thankful and polite as he's feeling. Shiga's grandmother looks between them and then her face breaks out into a big grin. "Now I see why you never came back!" she says, her tone conspiratorial as she leans towards Jesse. "For a man this handsome, I'd have thrown over Freddie as well."

Jesse goes bright red, and Shiga says, "Jesus, Gran!" with a scandalized tone and a genuinely delighted laugh.

She reiterates Shiga's insistence that there's nothing the Shiga family could do for Gabe and Jesse that's undeserved. She takes Gabe's hand and urges them to take full advantage of their hospitality here; her voice is earnest, but there's a glint in her eyes and a strength in the grip that she's got on Gabe's hand that makes him laugh a little. 

They decide that at this point it would be _rude_ to refuse the offered hospitality, so they head to their room to get changed into swim trunks and hit the pool.

"So," Gabe says as he pulls off his shirt, "You and Shiga, hmm?"

Jesse's laugh sounds startled and a little embarrassed. He gives Gabe a look. "You really want to do this? I ain't ever asked about you and--"

Gabe cuts him off quickly. "No, no, that's okay. It's your business. Sorry I asked."

"Ain't much of a secret. I was, what, nineteen? Twenty? With a real fucked up idea of what a relationship ought to be and an _overwhelming_ crush on my CO. Fred Shiga was a good friend, handsome and interested, and I was pretty sure that the thing with my CO wasn't ever going to work out, so it seemed like I might as well." Jesse shrugs. Gabe's pretty sure most people wouldn't be able to spot his discomfort. "We were together for three or four months--long enough for me to start recognizing that some of the shit I'd learned with Deadlock was just that, and long enough for him to realize that my crush on you wasn't going away anytime soon."

"Sorry," Gabe says, coming up behind Jesse and putting his arms around his torso, even while Jesse struggles to lean over and put on his swim trunks.

"Nothing to be sorry about. We parted ways amicably, and we've obviously both ended up okay." Jesse finally manages to wrangle his swim trunks on, and turns to kiss Gabe. "All of us, we all ended up okay."

"No thanks to me."

Jesse smiles. "You came around eventually."

They head to the pool Shiga had shown them earlier, the one with the on-site bar. Gabe sits poolside with a book and pretends to read it while Jesse swims lazy laps in front of him. His other job, as the one not in the pool, is to go to the bar and fetch them drinks. Jesse insists that an island getaway requires fancy fruity island drinks, so Gabe has a series of piña coladas, and Jesse is drinking--and this is verbatim what he tells Gabe to ask the bartender for--"the most colorful drink you can make that comes with a paper umbrella in it". Both drinks sit on the table by Gabe's chair, and Jesse drifts over to drink his between laps. (When Jesse props himself up on the edge of the pool on his elbows to drink, Gabe stops even pretending to read, watches him openly and grins.)

After a little bit, they're joined by other resort guests: a mother and her four kids, three women in bikinis who are obviously already a little tipsy, a group of twenty-somethings who look like they're maybe on a work trip, an old man who stomps through the pool area in socks and sandals and monopolizes the hot tub. Gabe tries to be a little more surreptitious about watching Jesse, tries to direct his attention to the other people around them. His bruises are mostly healed today, but it's hard to forget how they'd ached, and he's going to have a tough time letting his guard down until he's heard from Ana (or Jack, _maybe_ ) that the danger has been dealt with. The people here seem harmless enough, though. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to them at all, and Gabe is okay with that.

He notices when one of the kids motions her mother over and latches onto her neck to whisper in her ear, pointing intently at Jesse. Kid can't be any older than four, not staying afloat of her own accord but instead bobbing in the middle of an inner tube; her mom looks more "harried" than "threatening", so Gabe does not immediately leap into action, just waits and watches. 

The kid says something, and the mom says, more loudly, "I don't know, baby girl, you'd have to ask him." As Gabe watches, the kid paddles over to Jesse, who's floating on his back in lazy figure eights in pretty close proximity to Gabe and the fruity drinks. She stops right in front of him, squares off with him determinedly, and says, "Your arm has a skull on it."

He stops, puts his feet down on the bottom of the pool so he is on eye-level with her. "Sure does."

"Why do you have a metal arm?"

Jesse catches Gabe's eye, gives him an almost imperceptible shrug: _what do I tell this actual child about the terrible things we've done?_

Gabe tilts his head in response: _I trust your judgment._

"I got hurt fighting bad guys," Jesse tells her, leaning in a little like he's telling her a secret. Gabe knows he's got one eye on her mother as well, who's watching him like a hawk.

The kid gasps. "You fight bad guys?!"

Jesse's mouth twitches sideways, and Gabe bites back a laugh. "Not right now. Right now, my partner and I," he says, gesturing towards Gabe, "We're on vacation." (When Jesse gestures, the kid looks over at Gabe and waves. Gabe lowers his book and waves back.)

"Okay," the kid says seriously. "Fighting bad guys is hard work. I'm glad you get a vacation."

"Me too," Jesse says, laughing.

*

They try out the other pool the next day. It doesn't have the on-site bar, but it's a little bit bigger and Jesse entices Gabe in this time. They spend the day together in the water before going back to their room, getting room service, and then taking a late evening walk on the beach. Jesse holds his hand and smiles in the moonlight, and it all feels mundane in a way that Gabe's life hasn't in a long time--or maybe ever. He likes it.

He wishes he didn't have to upend it.

"So have you thought at all about what you'd like to do after this?" he asks quietly.

Jesse doesn't answer, makes a sort of thoughtful, non-committal noise.

"Haven't thought about it, or don't want to tell me?" Gabe teases, only to get more silence from Jesse. "Whatever it is, it can't be _that_ bad."

Jesse still doesn't answer.

"Come on, you had plenty of ideas about _my_ future. Surely you've got some input on _yours_."

Nothing.

"Well, what did you want to be when you grew up, as a kid?"

There's a suddenly a hard edge to Jesse's voice. "You really want to know? Really?" 

Gabe stops walking, turns to face him fully. "Yes."

"Alive," Jesse says with a mirthless laugh. "When I was a kid, I honestly thought my future would be great if I ended up alive. Never had much of a plan beyond that."

Gabe sucks in a breath.

"Honestly, _honestly_ , even in Deadlock, even in Blackwatch, I figured I was more likely to die than have to figure out what I wanted to do after I was done. Honestly, before you, half the time I didn't even give a shit if I was going to live that long. If I was lucky, I'd manage to break even on the bad things and good things I'd put into the world before I kicked the bucket. That was all I wanted. Then, there was you, and every now and then I'd get a glimpse of an after, something the two of us might maybe, someday get to have, and then-- _then_ we started fighting! The only futures I'd ever _dared_ to imagine for myself? You were in all of them, Gabe, and then I had to spend what felt like a thousand goddamn years arguing with you, trying to convince you that I deserved them."

"I didn't realize that that was what we were arguing about, when you wanted me to leave with you. I didn't know."

"You didn't--?" Jesse sputters for a second. "You...what the hell did you _think_ we were arguing about?"

Gabe takes a deep breath, then another.

"Well?" Jesse asks.

Gabe's voice is quieter than he expects when he finally speaks. "I was so sure you'd be in all my futures that it never occurred to me that you might leave without me."

Jesse stares at him, mouth open slightly, apparently dumbfounded. "You're the most goddamn infuriating person on the entire goddamn planet sometimes, Gabriel Reyes," he snarls. He turns on his heel and starts to stomp off.

"Jesse?" Gabe calls after him, before he can stop himself.

"Don't worry," Jesse calls back over his shoulder, his tone cutting straight through Gabe, "I need some air. I'm not _leaving_."

Gabe deserved that.

He goes back to the room, tries to watch the holo-vids and fails, ends up pacing without realizing it.

Eventually, Jesse comes back. He sits on the bed next to Gabe and doesn't look at him, just lets himself tip over sideways until his head is resting on Gabe's shoulder. He doesn't say anything.

"Do you know what I wanted to be when I grew up?" Gabe asks him.

"No?"

"Neither do I." Gabe lets out a shaky breath. He's never told anyone this before. "I'm just one in a long line of Reyes men who went into the service. I never really wanted to, but I knew it was what I was supposed to do, so I never really bothered to have some other dream." He tips his own head to lean on Jesse's. "It's not an excuse, but it's part of why leaving never felt like something I could do. I wouldn't be done with the army, with Overwatch, with Blackwatch, until it was done with me; everything else was an idle daydream."

Jesse sighs. "We're pretty fucked up, aren't we."

"I don't want you to leave, but sometimes I feel like you should," Gabe admits. "If you'd walked away this evening, I couldn't have blamed you."

"This still feels too good to be true. I keep expecting to wake up back in Blackwatch--or worse, in some universe where you made me leave you." Jesse finally looks over at Gabe, and his eyes are big and worried.

"I'm real." Gabe puts an arm around Jesse and pulls him close. "I'm real, and this is real."

"Sounds like something someone who's not real would say," Jesse says with a weak laugh.

"Whatever we're doing next, we'll figure it out together. I promise."

Jesse turns into Gabe's embrace, buries his face in Gabe's shoulder. "Gonna hold you to that."

"You'd better." Gabe rubs gentle circles into Jesse's back. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm sorry I put you through that. I'm sorry that I ever made you feel like you don't deserve to have everything that I can give you, because you do. You deserve all that and more."

Jesse pulls back, looks him in the eye very seriously. "Do you want to get married?"

"Is that a hypothetical, someday question, or a proposal?"

"Either? Both?"

Gabe studies him for a moment; Jesse is a little wild-eyed, expectant, a little terrified, and he's everything Gabe ever thought he'd never get for himself. 

He realizes he hasn't answered the question yet.

"Yes," he says. "Yes, I want to get married. To you, if you'll have me."

Jesse's face splits into a grin. "That's why I asked." He leans back in and kisses Gabe.

*

Gabe wakes up in the morning nestled into Jesse's side, a thin stripe of sunlight across both of them where they hadn't quite managed to pull the drapes closed. He shifts a little, moving closer to Jesse, and he closes his eyes again and breathes deeply, trying to hold onto this moment, then kisses Jesse awake.

"Good morning, _fiance_ ," Gabe murmurs against his mouth.

Jesse groans.

Gabe's stomach flips. The proposal had been sudden, at the end of a fight. Had it been reactionary? Does Jesse have regrets, here in the light of day? Gabe wouldn't begrudge...would do his best not to begrudge him changing his mind.

He does his best to make his voice light and asks, "Having second thoughts?"

"Oh, no, no, it's not that," Jesse says quickly. "I'm gonna marry the shit out of you, Gabe Reyes. I can't believe I proposed like that. No ring, wasn't down on one knee, didn't even ask you right. Not at all how it was supposed to go."

"There was a 'supposed to’?"

Jesse goes a little pink. "It's maybe something I'd been thinking about. Only gonna get married once, ought to do it right."

Gabe nods his agreement. "What does doing it right look like, to you?"

Jesse shifts, looks at him seriously. "Well, there ought to have been a ring, for sure. It’s…" He pauses, clears his throat in maybe embarrassment. Gabe nudges him, and he continues. "After all the time we spent having to hide, it feels important to me that people know. I want them to be able to look at us and say, _yep, those assholes are definitely married_."

Gabe finds he can't stop smiling. "You in favor of a big wedding, then?"

"Don't have a lot of people to invite, and I can think of a lot of better ways to spend the money a big wedding would take. Besides, I feel a little like I've waited long enough for this, and wouldn't be averse to going out and finding a courthouse this afternoon. Don't want to give you too much time; you might change your mind." He grins as he says it, but Gabe knows him well enough to hear the note of worried sincerity there.

"What do you need me to do to convince you I'm in this for good?" he asks gently.

Jesse looks away, shrugs. "Be here? No grand gesture is gonna be worth more than you actually being here." He looks back at Gabe, smiles a little mischievously. "But getting married to me will definitely help."

"I think I can manage that, on both counts. Easy." Gabe smiles. "I was worried you wanted something _hard_."

"Sweetheart," Jesse drawls, "There's only the one hard thing I need from you."

Gabe hits him with a pillow.

*

They catch a cab from the resort further inland, into town, where Jesse almost immediately steers them both into a jewelry store and over to the counter with the wedding bands. Gabe stands back while Jesse peppers the woman behind the counter (whose name tag says 'Leah') with questions about the materials they're made from, what were the realistic trade-offs between price and durability, and what sort of options they had available that will fit onto his left hand.

"Oh," Leah says, her voice a little too fawning for Gabe's tastes, "I think I know exactly what you're looking for." She turns to search the display behind her, then turns back. "For your ring, sir, are you looking for something removable, or something more permanent?"

"More permanent?" Jesse echoes.

"Yes! We have several models that allow the wearer to weld them onto their prosthetics. The removable models are resizable: they size up so that they will fit over the joints of your prosthetic, and then size back down when they have been put on. We guarantee that the resizable ones won't come off accidentally, but some people like the peace of mind that the permanent rings provide. Your thoughts, sir?"

Jesse glances at Gabe, then back to Leah. "Once it's on, I don't intend to take it back off. Let's see your permanent models."

Leah fusses over finding them just the right rings, and Gabe pays less attention to her than he does to Jesse's face. Jesse looks incandescently happy, and that makes _him_ happy.

Gabe picks a simple titanium band, silver with a darker gray stripe running around it, and there's a matching one for Jesse. Leah seems thrilled by their choice and sets about sizing them for the rings. She jots down some numbers, consults the jewelry case, and tells them that they're in luck! What they want is available in their sizes, and they can walk out with their rings today, if they'd like.

Jesse nods eagerly.

After they leave the jewelry store, Jesse looks like he's walking on air, won't stop smiling and glancing down at the small bag into which Leah had deposited their purchases. Gabe manages, somehow, to wrangle him into a clothing store, the actual point of the trip to town.

His wardrobe right now consists mostly of plain t-shirts, a beat-up pair of jeans and a pair of khakis, two hoodies he probably wasn't supposed to have taken with him, and one dark purple, overlarge sweater that Jesse had bought him after five straight years of listening to him complain about how cold the Swiss winters were.

He's not sure what Jesse's wardrobe situation is like, but doesn't imagine it's much better than his own; Jesse hadn't had much when he'd been brought into Blackwatch, and hasn't had much opportunity or need for anything he couldn't get from the Blackwatch requisitions officer.

Gabe ends up picking a lot of black and gray, pants and shirts of a multitude of cuts and sleeve lengths. He also picks one button-up shirt in the same dark purple as his sweater and stands in front of the mirror contemplating it for a minute.

"Make sure you get something nice I can take you to the courthouse in," Jesse calls from the next fitting room over.

Gabe exits his fitting room, still in the purple shirt, and knocks on the door of Jesse's. When Jesse opens it, he's in a red and white plaid shirt and dark blue jeans, looking every goddamn inch the all-American cowboy. Jesse always looks good, but this, the way the button-up stretches across his chest and the rolled-up sleeves show off his forearms, this is something else.

"You look...wow," Gabe manages. 

"Same to you," Jesse says with a grin. "Definitely courthouse worthy." He pulls at the front of Gabe's shirt, drawing him into the fitting room and closing the door behind them. He pushes Gabe up against the wall and kisses him deeply--just long enough for Gabe to really get into it, and a moment too long for the fitting room attendant, who pounds a fist on the door and tells them in a tone of voice that implies he's not being paid nearly enough for this that _the fitting rooms are single-occupancy, sirs_.

"He's helping me choose shirts," Jesse says smoothly, charmingly, as he opens the door. Gabe nods quickly. The fitting room attendant does not look like he believes them, but still is not paid enough to deal with this and so shakes his head and walks away.

Gabe leans in as the attendant leaves. "You know, they can kick us out of here," he says, trying and failing to keep his tone serious.

"You know where they can't kick us out of?" Jesse says, leaning in closer. " _Blackwatch_."

He's got a point.

They look at the things Jesse's chosen, a lot of browns and blues, all well-tailored and presentable. Gabe shouldn't be surprised, but after that debacle with the "white hat" outfit early on, his trust's been slow to rebuild.

They change back into their regular clothes and head for the checkout.

"So," Gabe says as he sets his clothes on the counter, "I've been thinking about this courthouse business."

"Oh?"

"If we get married before my family meets you, I will never hear the end of it."

Jesse blinks at him as the cashier takes Gabe's prepaid card and pretends she's not listening very intently to their conversation. "So...you want me to meet your folks?"

Gabe signs the receipt and leans up on the counter while Jesse checks out. "I want to marry you, don't I?" 

Jesse hands the woman his credit card, signs the receipt she gives him back. "Don't know much about your family," he says, sounding thoughtful.

Gabe shrugs. He waits until they've exited the store to continue the conversation, because now that they're done checking out, the cashier isn't even pretending not to be eavesdropping. "There's not much to know. I'm the oldest of four, with three younger sisters: Julia, Rita, and Christina. My dad was in the military, and my mom did her best to raise us while he was away." He shoots a sideways glance at Jesse. "Dad's always been, well, military. Strict."

"Somebody who wouldn't take well to you breaking the rules and sleeping with somebody under your command?" 

Gabe shakes his head. "I haven't brought anybody home to meet the family since before basic."

"You think they won't know that's what happened with us?"

"I think I've stopped giving a shit," Gabe says, and he reaches out to squeeze Jesse's hand.

*

Gabe coordinates with his sister, Christina, that evening as he buys tickets to LAX and coordinates with her to get picked up from the airport and taken to see their parents. His other sisters are within driving distance of Christina's place, and she assures him that they'll all be there to see Gabe and meet Jesse.

Jesse already looks nervous. Gabe is starting to reassure him that this is going to be far less of a big deal than they've both made it out to be when there's a loud knock on the bungalow door.

They exchange a look. They aren't expecting anyone, Shiga's been good about pinging them for confirmation before coming by, and nobody else should know that they're here. Jesse nods and goes for the weapons in their luggage while Gabe slips the ring off his finger and into his pocket and goes for the door.

Outside, a woman with bright red hair and a slightly ill-fitting suit is standing in the dim evening light, waiting. She's wearing sunglasses. "Commander Reyes," she says. "You're a hard man to find."

Gabe crosses his arms, stands menacingly in the crack he's opened the door. He knows that behind him, Jesse is still silently moving, readying himself. "Could be that's by design," he says to the woman. "What are you doing here, Miss...?"

"Marcs. Agent Jean Marcs, actually." 

Marcs flashes Gabe a badge that he can only partially make out in the dim light. He grabs it from her, holds it up to the light, remembering the forged paperwork he and Jack had discovered. It looks genuine enough, but he continues to be wary.

Marcs takes her badge back from Gabe calmly. "I'm here on behalf of the United States government, because you seem to have run off with US government property."

Gabe's mind races. What could he have taken? Sure, there were a couple of Blackwatch hoodies, but nothing else came to mind. And he knew Jesse wouldn't have taken anything important, as eager as he'd been to have all of Overwatch behind them. Jesse's arm, maybe? Surely not. Besides, anything they'd taken from Overwatch would be UN property, not US property--

"I mean _you_ , Commander Reyes. May I come in? I would rather not have this discussion...out here."

Gabe does not move, lets the muscles in his jaw and neck shift in what he's been told is a particularly menacing way.

Marcs sighs. "Okay, fine. Your participation in a particular classified US military program has made it so that the US government has a vested interest in your whereabouts and well-being."

Gabe moves now, stepping out of the doorway. He closes the door behind him and leans up against it heavily enough that he's sure Jesse heard inside. "What exactly does that mean, Agent Marcs?"

"On paper, it means that we'd know where you are and how you're doing, because it is in both our best interests that your blood remain inside your body."

It takes every ounce of Gabe's willpower not to glance back at the bungalow. Only he and Jesse know about the mission in Lahore, where Jesse had nearly bled out in a back alley and without even thinking, Gabe had pulled out the med kit, the tourniquet and the needles, and given Jesse blood from his own arm. Since then, Jesse has been...a little stronger, a little faster, a little quicker on the uptake and in recovery. It's nowhere near as intense as the full SEP regimen Gabe has, but it's still there.

If the government is worried about other people having his blood, they are not going to be too pleased about Jesse McCree.

"In practice," Marcs continues, "You're a hero of the Omnic Crisis and you've proven over the years that you're more than capable of taking care of yourself--and, off the record? I've looked at your files, and I don't want to be the one who has to give you one more raw deal."

"You're too kind," Gabe says, his voice deadpan.

"What I've been authorized to offer you is basically your freedom, with two major conditions: you ping our guys once, maybe twice a month, let them know that you're alive and well. We can set you up with secure comms, you can do whatever you need to do to reassure yourself that we're not using it to track you. We don't need to know where you are, and you don't need to think about us outside of your check-ins." Marcs pauses, obviously waiting for a reaction from Gabe; when she doesn't get one, she continues. "The second condition is that you come in for an annual health checkup with one of our doctors."

"Angela Ziegler," Gabe says.

Marcs doesn't quite make a face, but Gabe can tell that she wants to. "I can't promise anything, but I'll see what I can do. The last piece of this, Commander, is that you come to us first if you need medical treatment. We understand that this may not always be possible, in emergency situations or the like, but you would have to make a good faith effort."

"You don't want other doctors poking around in your classified shit," Gabe says.

"Not if it can be helped." Marcs sighs. "We're not unreasonable people, Commander."

"You show up at my very-hard-to-find door in the dark, wearing a suit and sunglasses, and you expect me to assume that you're 'reasonable people'?"

"Point taken, Commander."

"I've got some conditions of my own," Gabe says, watching Marcs carefully as she removes her sunglasses. "First, Strike Commander Morrison and Captain Amari are looking into an...infiltration into Overwatch. I want government resources allocated to them, outside support that they can trust."

Marcs raises an eyebrow.

"Not sure Jack and I are gonna be safe until that's taken care of, Agent Marcs. Seems to me that's well within your jurisdiction."

Marcs grumbles, but pulls out her phone and types a few things into it. "Fine. What else?"

"If I so much as catch your people breathing near me and mine outside the conditions we've laid out, I walk. I don't care what the United States government says, it is impossible for me to be _your property_ , and you will never fucking find me again." Gabe steps forward into Marcs' space, and Marcs takes three hasty steps back. Behind Gabe, the door to the bungalow opens, and there's Jesse, looking somehow both menacing and charming at once, Peacekeeper holstered at his side.

"Everything okay out here, Reyes?" he asks.

Marcs looks back and forth between them. "Your conditions are fair," she says. "I'll talk to my superiors, but I don't foresee any problems." She looks at Jesse again--Gabe sees the way she evaluates his hand hovering near his hip and the slant of his mouth--and then back again at Gabe. "Anything else you need to tell me?"

Gabe steps back, so he and Jesse are standing shoulder to shoulder. "No, I think we're done here."

Marcs gives Gabe a business card and a look that's more amused than it has any right to be. "We'll be in touch," she tells him.

"I won't be here," Gabe mutters, pocketing the card.

"Don't worry. We'll find you."

Gabe swears to himself, pulls the card and his phone back out of his pocket. He texts _FUCK YOU_ to the cell number listed on the card, then watches as Marcs fishes her own phone out to check the text she'd just received. "Call me," he says, his tone dark. "Do _not_ just show up again. I will come to you."

"Good evening, gentlemen." Marcs nods her head at them, and walks off into the dark.

Gabe swears again.

"How much of that did you hear?" he asks Jesse.

"Enough." Gabe feels Jesse's hands on him, gentle but firm, guiding him back into the bungalow. "What do you want to do? If you need to run, we can run."

Gabe shakes his head. "You start running from something big like the government, you don't ever get to stop." He takes a heavy seat on the sofa, and Jesse sits carefully next to him, puts an arm around Gabe's waist. Gabe leans into him, presses his face into Jesse's neck, takes a moment or two to breathe.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Jesse takes a deep breath. "Darlin', I love you, but if you try again to convince me that I'm better off leaving you, I swear to god--"

Gabe laughs. "Wouldn't dream of it. You, me, and the US military, we're apparently all in this for the long haul."

"I've had to share you since the day I met you, Gabe. At least this way there are a lot fewer assassinations."

"Hopefully _no_ assassinations. Although," he says, a little teasingly, "I suppose you should never say never."

"It's probably okay to say never _sometimes_ ," Jesse murmurs, and Gabe can hear the smile in his voice. "So what's the plan now? I know we bought those tickets to your parents' place. Do we still go?"

Gabe looks up at Jesse now, at the concern written across his face. "The plan right now is to go soak in the hot tub for a bit, and then we regroup in the morning. Sound okay to you?"

Jesse smiles, nods. "Sounds great."

The hot tub _is_ great. The tension leaches out of Gabe pretty thoroughly, and Jesse goes the sort of floaty and boneless that they usually only manage in the bedroom, and Gabe wonders if they aren't maybe, finally out of the woods.

*

Gabe's phone rings at 4am. He is awake instantly, because that's his job--that's not his job anymore--that used to be his job--

He fumbles for his phone on the bedside table for a moment. Once he's grabbed it, he sees that the call is from Jack, and that it's a video call. He flips on the light; next to him, Jesse shifts with a groan but doesn't seem to wake.

"Hello?" Gabe says, sitting up and moving back so his back rests against the headboard. He keeps his voice low and quiet.

On the phone screen, Jack squints at him. "Shit, Reyes, did I wake you up?"

Gabe shakes his head. "It's fine, Jack. What do you need?"

"You know, we could have avoided all this timezone crap if you had just told me where you went--"

" _What do you need, Jack_ ," Gabe repeats.

"Given how poorly it went for both of us the last time I thought you referred somebody for a position, I thought I would actually talk to you about who the hell Agent Marcs is and why the hell she's directed a bunch of soldiers and spooks to my operation."

Gabe blinks in surprise--that was quite the turnaround. "I spoke with Marcs last night. Double-check her credentials through whatever back-channels you have, but given how surprised all of us have been by these infiltrator agents, I thought maybe some outside help wouldn't be unwelcome."

"Talon," Jack says, his voice gruff. "The agent Ana brought back from Newark said they're calling themselves Talon."

"Sounds like a bunch of dramatic bullshit." Gabe hides a yawn with the back of his hand. "Take or leave her help, Jack, I don't care. I want to be done with this shit." He thinks about Marcs, sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. "As done as I can be, anyway."

He looks back to his phone. Jack is giving him a doubtful stare.

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"You never seemed like you wanted out," Jack says. His voice is...small, and Gabe kind of hates it.

"We weren't talking; all we were doing was shouting at each other. How the hell would you have known?"

Jack goes quiet.

"Blackwatch was doing kidnappings, weapons sabotage, assassinations, fucking _train robberies_. Anybody with any sense would have wanted out." Gabe glances over at Jesse, fast asleep, and bites back a fond smile.

Jack stays quiet, a moment or two too long. This would be where an apology went, Gabe realizes, in some other conversation with some other person.

"Retirement is treating you well, at least," Jack says, when he finally speaks. "You look...good. Tan. Well-rested."

Gabe chuckles. "Doing my best. Helps when I don't get calls from some asshole in the middle of the night." Jack looks suitably chastened, and Gabe says gently, "You could get out, you know."

Jack shakes his head. "Not sure what I'd do with myself, without all this. I just hope we can save it."

"The UN gave you Overwatch for a reason. If anyone can set it right, it's you." It's as close as he is probably ever going to get to apologizing to Jack Morrison. Jack gives him a doubtful look, but Gabe shakes his head. "I mean that."

"We could use you here, you know," Jack says. He is almost certainly mirroring Gabe's earlier phrasing on purpose, and Gabe stifles a groan.

Next to Gabe, Jesse shifts in the bed, throws an arm across Gabe's lap and tries to burrow his nose into Gabe's hip, still asleep. Gabe's not sure how much of it is visible on the video call, but judging by Jack's face, at least some of it is.

"I'll, uh, I'll let you get back to sleep," Jack says. "If I turn up anything on Marcs, or if her people turn up anything, we'll let you know." Then he abruptly ends the call.

Jesse shifts again, this time more deliberately, apparently less asleep than Gabe had thought. "Why are you answering calls from Strike Commander Morrison in the middle of the night?" he asks, not moving his face from Gabe's hip.

"Old, bad habits," Gabe tells him, running a hand through Jesse's hair and down to trace idle lines across his back. He says, fondly, "You know, you can be a real asshole sometimes."

Jesse turns his head now to look at up at Gabe, blinking a little in the light. "Mostly only to Jack Fucking Morrison. He knows what he did." He props his head up on Gabe's thigh. "Think of it as me finalizing my resignation."

Gabe lets his mouth quirk up into the fond smile that's been threatening him this whole time. He wonders again how he'd managed to get so lucky, turns out the light and lets Jesse pull him back down to the bed.

*

They have two more days in Hawaii before they have to fly out, and the time goes quickly, spent in bed and on the beach and, one evening, surrounded by the entire Shiga clan at a dinner that is maybe being thrown in their honor. It's delicious, and it still feels like more generosity than they deserve--but then one or two of Shiga's cousins tell their stories from the Crisis, want to shake Gabe's hand, and he maybe finally gets it. Shiga tells a bunch of stories too, about their Blackwatch missions, all of which are entirely untrue, grinning at Gabe and Jesse as he does.

Shiga's grandmother insists on sitting next to Gabe, and on his other side, Jesse hooks his ankle around Gabe's under the table and pulls him a little closer.

They pack their things, reluctantly getting ready to leave their island getaway. Gabe crawls around on the floor to make sure they haven't left anything under the bed or the dresser; when he stands up, Jesse is staring somewhere past the suitcases on the bed, a look on his face somewhere between concern and distress.

Gabe walks up to him, nudges him out of his reverie. "You still with me?"

Jesse shakes himself a little. "Yeah, sorry. Sorry."

"Nervous?"

"You don't get nervous, you get ready," Jesse responds automatically. "Brief me. What do I need to know? Likes, dislikes, allergies, birthdays, middle names--"

"Jesse." Gabe puts a hand on his shoulder, stops him up short. "Sweetheart. There's nothing to worry about. You'll be fine."

Jesse gives him an almost reprimanding look. "This is obviously something that's important to you, or you wouldn't have waited this long to do it. I don't want to fuck it up."

"You’ll be _fine_ ," Gabe repeats. He squares up with Jesse, stepping between him and the bed, takes his hand and squeezes. "You're everything a family could want for their son."

"A former teenage terrorist who made their son break a bunch of rules and then quit his job--yeah, I'm the dream."

Gabe looks at Jesse sternly.

" _I_ don't believe that, but who's to say your dad won't?"

"We met at work, and that's all anyone needs to know," Gabe says. Jesse snorts. "What? It's true. Just because it doesn't include all the details doesn't make it not true. And for the record, you never _made_ me do anything. Any rules I broke, I broke of my own volition, with my eyes fully open to the consequences."

"That's good to know, at least." Jesse gives him a crooked smile. "Seriously, though--what do I do if your family doesn't like me?"

"They're going to love you--"

("Of course they will, I'm goddamn delightful," Jesse says, almost like he's trying to convince himself it's true.)

"--but if they don't, well, then we leave." 

Jesse looks at him, horrified. "But they're your _family_."

"So are you, Jesse." Jesse does not look convinced, so Gabe tries again. "Look at it this way--who's _your_ family?"

"You know my folks are dead," Jesse says, shrinking in on himself a little bit, his tone a touch accusatory.

"Not what I'm asking. Ana Amari, she's family, right? Angela Ziegler, Fareeha Amari, the strike team, they're all family?"

Jesse nods. "Same with Reinhardt, the Newtons, Genji, wherever he is--you too."

Gabe allows himself the smile this declaration causes, then continues. "So if you had to choose between Ana and your good-for-nothing dad, who would you pick?"

Jesse doesn't even hesitate. "Ana, every time."

"And this is the same. You're family, Jesse. I came too close to not treating you like it to ever do it again." Gabe tilts his head in, presses his forehead to Jesse's, closes his eyes.

Jesse doesn't say anything, but Gabe can hear him breathing: in, out, in, out. Then, Jesse's kissing him, the force of the movement propelling Gabe backwards until his calves hit the bed. He sits abruptly, and Jesse easily straddles his lap, a knee on either side of Gabe's thighs and his ass firmly on Gabe's dick. Gabe is vaguely aware of the suitcases on the bed behind him, but Jesse's mouth is insistent. His hands pick at the buttons on the front of Gabe's shirt with practiced efficiency while he whispers in Gabe's ear: "I'd really like to fuck you."

A shiver runs through Gabe. "I'd like that too," he says. They don't have to be at the airport quite yet, and really, it seems like the perfect end to their island getaway.

Gabe helps Jesse move the suitcases off the bed, shimmies out of his clothes while Jesse does the same.

"How do you want me?" Gabe asks, his voice low, unable to hide his own want.

Jesse looks--thoughtful, as thoughtful as a man can when he's naked and hard. He climbs up onto the bed, sits on his shins with his feet tucked up under him, beckons Gabe over. Gabe sits next to Jesse, lets himself be maneuvered up onto Jesse's lap so that he is sitting similarly, his knees on either side of Jesse's knees, his back to Jesse's front.

"This okay?" Jesse asks, his voice right in Gabe's ear. Gabe nods. Jesse's hard cock is already tucked up between the cheeks of his ass, and he lifts up off Jesse's lap a little, feeling Jesse's cock slide with him. 

Jesse moans.

"You like that?" Gabe asks.

"Yeah," Jesse says, thrusting his hips up as Gabe lowers himself back down. Jesse's thighs shift under him, the cords of muscle moving against each other. Gabe can't help the noise that he makes, and Jesse does it again, three or four more times, rutting up against Gabe. Gabe bears down with what feels a little like desperation, wanting to touch his aching dick but knowing that Jesse probably has plans.

As if on cue, he hears the top of the lube bottle being popped open behind him. "Can you...?" Jesse asks, nudging Gabe forward a little bit. Gabe obliges, moving off of Jesse's lap, still sitting on his knees. He peers back to see what Jesse is doing, but Jesse presses his left hand between Gabe's shoulder blades, pushes him forward even more so that his ass is in the air.

"Still okay?" Jesse asks, his voice quiet, rough with want.

Gabe takes a moment, evaluates, nods. "Yeah." 

He feels the palm of Jesse's hand on his ass, and then one tentative, slick finger works its way inside him. It feels good, and the second and third fingers feel even better; Gabe wants very much to touch himself, but still, he waits. Jesse moves his fingers inside Gabe, probing, curling in a way that makes Gabe's toes curl up too.

"You ready?" Jesse asks, and Gabe nods, lets himself be guided back to Jesse's lap, guided down onto Jesse's waiting dick. He lowers himself deliberately, one eye cast back over his shoulder, watching the way Jesse holds himself very, very still while Gabe does all the moving. When he's finally, fully seated on Jesse's thighs, then Jesse moves, leaning back on his left arm while wrapping his right around Gabe's torso.

"Lean back," he tells Gabe, and Gabe does, his body drawing itself into almost a straight line between his knees and his head, Jesse's arm still holding his torso close to Jesse's own. Jesse thrusts up while Gabe pushes down; the angle is new and different, and Gabe is pretty sure he likes it. He feels utterly filled up.

Jesse's movement picks up speed, and he presses his mouth against Gabe's shoulder. "Can I?" he asks, not moving his lips from Gabe's skin.

Gabe feels the scrape of teeth, knowing exactly what Jesse's asking. "Yes," he breathes. "Yes."

Jesse bites down, leaving what Gabe knows will be a set of tender half-moon bruises on his skin.

_Mine_ , Jesse whispers, and Gabe closes his eyes, whispers back, _Yours_.

Finally, Jesse moves his hand down from Gabe's torso to touch Gabe's dick. The head is nearly coated in pre-cum, and Jesse practically purrs when he feels it, rubs it across his palm and uses it to stroke Gabe, matching his thrusts into Gabe's ass. Gabe leans in to the feeling, holding on as long as he can, but Jesse feels so good--and then he's coming, thrusting up into Jesse's fist wildly. Jesse's self-control must give out around the same time, because Gabe can feel him coming too, his dick pulsating as Gabe keeps going, up and down, riding him through to orgasm.

Then, the arm Jesse's been leaning on gives out, and they both topple backwards onto the bed.

When they have managed to extricate themselves from one another and stop laughing, Jesse touches the place he'd bitten on Gabe's shoulder. He apologizes, sounding a little sheepish.

"What is there to be sorry for? I told you that you could do it," Gabe says.

"I know, but--"

"I like being yours, Jesse," Gabe says, and Jesse smiles.

*

Even after everything, they manage to make it to the airport on time.

Christina is waiting for them when they touch down at LAX. She launches herself at Gabe, catching him in a bear hug. "It's so good to see you!" she says into his chest, before pulling away to grin at him. "It's been a while, big brother."

Gabe ducks his head, a little embarrassed. He had skipped out on the last few family Christmases, citing too much work stuff but really wanting to spend the time with Jesse and not quite knowing how to reconcile the two obligations. The last time the whole Reyes clan had managed to get together had been Julia's wedding a few years back.

"And you must be Jesse!" Christina says, turning to him. "We've heard so little about you!" She elbows Gabe pointedly, even while she smiles at Jesse.

Jesse reaches up with his left hand, grabs his hat between his thumb and forefinger and tips it ever-so-slightly. He says, politely, "Ma'am."

Christina laughs. "No need to be so formal!" she says, dragging Jesse into a hug too. "By the look of things, you're already practically family." She turns back to Gabe, grabs his right hand to examine where he's wearing the ring they'd picked out. 

(He had Jesse had talked about it on the plane, had decided that someone had to break the ice on their engagement, that maybe Gabe--as the one who'd been proposed to--could just wear his ring and hope that someone noticed. Neither of them expected it to happen _this_ quickly, though.)

"Congratulations, you two!" Christina escorts them towards the baggage claim. "When were you going to tell us?!"

Gabe shrugs, makes a sort of _ta-da_ motion, and Christina laughs.

They pick up their luggage and climb into Christina's car, both of them in the back while she drives. Jesse grabs Gabe's hand on the seat between them and holds on tight.

Christina is chatty as she drives. "So what were you two doing in Hawaii? Work stuff? And when do you have to be back at base? We're glad to have you, however long you're going to be here."

Jesse looks over at Gabe, a little unsure how to answer. Christina must spot their unspoken exchange in the rear view mirror, because she says, directly to Jesse, "I'm just guessing that you work with Gabi--my brother never tells me anything, but I also know that his social life isn't vibrant enough for him to have met you anywhere but work."

"Hey!" Gabe protests, even as Jesse's face cracks into a grin.

She glances at Gabe over her shoulder. "He's Overwatch, right? Am I wrong?"

Gabe says nothing, just grumbles, and the noise Christina makes in response can best be described as a 'cackle'. When Gabe's pride has recovered, he says, "Hawaii was a...much-deserved vacation. And we don't ever have to be back at Overwatch."

The look Christina gives him in the rear view mirror is measured, and Gabe's pretty sure he's not supposed to see the way her gaze darts over to Jesse. She doesn't even have to say it; he knows what she's thinking, and when he looks at Jesse, he knows Jesse knows it too.

"That's...sudden. You get kicked out or something?"

"We quit," Jesse says defensively.

"You quit? Are you being serious right now?"

Gabe nods. "Jesse finally convinced me it was time to get out. It's a long, probably at least partially-classified story, but the gist of it is that it's a good thing we're getting out."

The car swerves off onto the shoulder and screeches to a halt. Gabe manages to brace himself on the seat in front of him, and he's aware that Jesse has grabbed onto him even as he starts prepping for whatever fight it is they're being thrown into. His shotguns are still in his checked luggage in the trunk of the car; he hadn't thought he'd need them. Jesse is swearing, and outside, a stream of angrily honking cars is passing by, and then--

"I'm so happy for you!" Christina nearly shouts, turning around in her seat to grin widely at them both. "Oh my god, Rita owes me _so_ much money."

"What? Wait, _what_?"

"You have been miserable at Overwatch for forever. It's so good that you're out! Rita and I figured it was only a matter of time, and we just...put a little money on whether you'd get fired or quit."

"My own sisters," Gabe says, a hand over his heart and a note of mostly-fake betrayal in his voice. He's still on alert from Christina slamming on the brakes, and a little shaken at the realization that everybody in his life but him had known how badly he'd needed to get out.

"We just want you to be happy," Christina says, sounding serious for a moment. "After the Crisis, when Morrison got the promotion you wanted--"

Gabe cuts her off, aware of Jesse's eyes on him. "I'm out now. We don't need to talk about it."

*

Christina takes them to Gabe's parents' house, where the whole family is waiting for them. Gabe hadn't expected it to be this much of a big deal, the whole family crowded into the front room, Gabe and Jesse stood in front of them like soldiers being dressed down. Gabe fights the urge to stand at attention, instead draws up close to Jesse and puts his left hand gently at the small of Jesse's back.

Gabe works his way around the room, making introductions: his mom and dad; his sister, Rita; his other sister, Julia, and her husband Derek and their son Luis; Christina and her partner, Jordan. When he runs out of family members, he finally gets to say: "Everyone, this is Jesse. He's...he's very important to me."

Jesse smiles and leans back into Gabe's touch.

Conversation picks up around them. Julia hasn't been to see anyone else in a while either, so everyone needs to catch up with her and her family too. Jesse sticks close to Gabe, nodding along to Julia's story about the disaster that is Luis' sleep schedule, when a shriek issues from the adjoining hallway.

" _Engaged_?!" Rita says loudly, before storming into the front room and waving an accusatory finger at Gabe. "You left Overwatch and got engaged in less than two weeks, and all you can say is that he's _important_ to you?!"

"He _is_ ," Gabe protests, but the room around him is already thrown into chaos. Rita is hugging Jesse, and it looks like a line is forming behind her. Gabe's mom is kissing both his cheeks, peppering him with questions--how did they meet, how long had they been seeing each other, why hadn't Gabe brought Jesse to meet his dear old mother sooner.

"What did Rita mean, you 'left' Overwatch?" Gabe's dad says, his voice quiet but somehow still cutting through the noise of the room.

"We left, Dad. I got out. It was--trust me, it was time."

Gabe's dad grabs his arm, and Gabe lets himself be pulled out into the hallway and through into the kitchen.

"You tell me straight, Gabriel," his dad says, sounding possibly more concerned than Gabe can remember him ever sounding. "Is that boy blackmailing you?"

Gabe snatches his arm away. "What the fuck, Dad? Of course not."

"See, though, I'm having trouble coming up with a reason that would have you resigning from the organization you helped to build and running off with--with--"

"Go ahead," Gabe says, his voice low and hard, "I really want to see how you finish that sentence." 

His dad does not respond.

"Maybe I love him. Maybe he loves _me_. Is that so hard to believe? That I love him, and that he _chose_ me? I don't have to stand here and--"

"Did he choose you? Could he?"

Gabe's stomach flips. He still worries that himself sometimes, late at night, when he's feeling low. He worried it a lot when they'd been fighting, these last few months, but hadn't known how to get the reassurances he needed without worrying that they, too, were something Jesse felt obligated to give.

He'll never, ever tell his dad that, though, so instead he spits, "Why does everybody think I'm a goddamn monster? I'm not having this conversation with you. I brought Jesse here because I'm happy-- _we're_ happy--and I thought that maybe, just maybe, you and Mom would want to be happy with me."

His dad has the grace to look embarrassed, at least. "You're my son. I don't want you to do anything you'll regret."

"I regret this, that's for fucking sure." Gabe stomps out of the kitchen.

Jesse catches his eye when he enters the front room. He's smiling, but he gives Gabe the sign that means _I'm overwhelmed, please come extract me_ , so Gabe inserts himself in the crowd of Reyes women around Jesse, takes his hand, and pulls him away and upstairs to the room where their luggage had been deposited earlier.

Once the door has closed behind them, Jesse breathes a sigh of relief, then immediately looks guilty for it. "Your family is real nice. Intense, but nice."

Gabe gives him a rueful smile and pulls him into the tightest hug he can manage. They stand there like that for a minute, quiet, each burrowing into the comfort of the other.

"They didn't give you a hard time, did they?" Gabe asks into Jesse's neck.

"No, no, nothing like that. They really all have been so nice. It's just--" Jesse pauses for a moment, searching for the right words. "I'm not sure I've ever had this many hugs in this short a time before."

Gabe tries to pull away, feeling sure that he is contributing to that overwhelming number, but Jesse's fingers clutch into his back, making him unable to move. If anything, Jesse tries to pull him closer.

"We can go back downstairs in a minute," Jesse says. He finally steps back, turning away from Gabe. Gabe watches the way his shoulders rise and fall, then takes a seat on the bed, the one they'll be sharing until they decide to leave. "Thanks for the escape. I wish I hadn't needed it."

"You want to leave, you say the word." Gabe tries and fails to keep his simmering anger out of his voice. He feels his hands clench into fists, stares hard at the floor.

Jesse turns back to him. "I don't want to leave, I--are you okay?" Gabe says nothing, keeps staring down at the floor. Jesse crosses the distance between them, puts a hand under his chin, tilts Gabe's face up to meet his eyes. "Sweetheart?"

"I never... You never felt like I was abusing my position of power in our relationship, did you?"

The question startles a laugh out of Jesse. "You're kidding, right? If anything, I've felt like _I_ was taking advantage of _you_ sometimes."

Gabe gives him a sharp look of confusion.

"C'mon, you've been so, so obviously head-over-heels in love with me since the beginning," Jesse says, grinning as he sits down on the bed next to Gabe. "I never doubted that you'd agree to anything even _remotely_ reasonable that I asked you. Never been scared of retaliation, never been scared of saying no to you. Hell, outside of actual mission stuff and all this leaving business, I don't think you ever _did_ manage to tell me no."

Gabe smiles, leans over into Jesse a little.

"Why do you ask? Did your dad say something? Do I need to go have a talk with him?"

"Not sure he'd listen," Gabe says, but Jesse is already standing, is already halfway out the door.

"Nobody talks shit about my fiance and gets away with it. You wait here," he tells Gabe, and then he's gone.

Five minutes pass, then ten. The raised voices Gabe expects to hear through the house's thin walls never materialize. He checks his phone, scrolls through a series of messages from Ana updating him on the Talon situation. With the help of Marcs' people, they'd uncovered twelve more agents with Talon connections, three or four of whom had been Blackwatch--one of whom had been Edwards, holy _shit_. Ana assures him they've got it under control, but if a double agent had spent that long under his nose and he hadn't even noticed... It really _is_ a good thing they got out.

At fifteen minutes, Christina peeks her head in through the bedroom door, which Jesse had left slightly ajar. "They're out in the backyard," she says without preamble. "It didn't look like anybody had killed anybody else yet, but Rita's got an eye out."

Gabe huffs a laugh.

Christina enters the room, takes a seat at the desk across the room. "You weren't around when I first brought Jordan home to meet Mom and Dad, you were off saving the world or something. That was _hard_. Mom couldn't quite wrap her head around hir, and Dad said some really hurtful things. But ze and I gave it some space and some time, and eventually they both warmed up to hir and to the idea of us." She heaves a sigh. "It's not the same thing, I know--Mom _loves_ Jesse, by the way, good work there--but sometimes they just need a little bit to warm up to new ideas. Dad's always been so proud of the work you've done with Overwatch, and now he has to figure out how to deal with this new you." She smiles a wry smile. "You were always the good kid, so I understand that this is new territory for you, but trust me, he'll come around. He always does."

They both look over as Jesse comes up the stairs. "Do we need to leave?" Gabe asks him, trying to keep his tone light.

Jesse tosses his head, practically _scoffs_ at the question. "I'll have you know that you are getting married to one charming son of a bitch," he says. 

"I _knew_ that," Gabe says, smiling. "It's a thing that I like about him."

Jesse grins back at him. (Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe's pretty sure he sees Christina grinning too.) Jesse continues, "I'm not sure your dad _likes_ me yet, but I think we're at least on the same page now. Now, I'm gonna guess that an apology is unlikely, but we _have_ been invited back downstairs to help your mom with dinner things, so..."

As they head down the stairs, Christina nudges into Gabe, still grinning. "I like him. You should keep him."

Gabe looks down at the ring he's wearing, then up at Jesse, a warm, contented feeling growing in his torso, and he nods. "That's the plan."

*

That night, after dinner and drinks and an awkward Reyes family game of charades, Gabe and Jesse retire to their bedroom. Julia and her family are staying with Christina and Jordan, but Rita is staying in her old room down the hall, and Gabe's parents are in their room, between the two.

"Do we have an exit plan?" Jesse asks, his voice pitched low and soft as he strips down for bed. "Not that I'm not having a nice time, but it's been a long time since I had to live out of suitcases, and I forgot how awful it is. It would be great to know what we're doing, both in the short and the, uh--" Jesse looks away, rubs at his neck awkwardly, "The long term."

When Gabe doesn't respond, Jesse says, "Come on--you always have a plan or three."

It's a little generous to call the thing Gabe's been turning over in his head the last couple days a "plan"; it's more of an idea than a full-blown plan. As a hero of the Omnic Crisis, the world had shown him their gratitude in a number of ways, one of which had been monetary. He hasn't had anything to spend it on since, so he's sitting on...quite a sum of money. 

They'd worked out of a lot of different Overwatch bases and watchpoints over the years, but the one in Colorado, Grand Mesa, has always been a favorite of his and Jesse's. It's close enough to where he'd grown up, for both of them, with real seasons and fresh air and, at this point, some really good memories. (Jesse had kissed him for the first time at Grand Mesa.) He likes Colorado, and while he's been turning over a number of possibilities in his head, his plan, such as it is, is to take some of his hero money and buy a house there. It's a mundane thing, normal, that will lead to a thousand other normal, mundane things--furniture shopping, yard work, pets--and Gabe is finding he wants all of that, wants to give it to Jesse too.

He doesn't want to have to hide, from Overwatch or from anyone else. He just wants to be a person in the world, enjoying the peace he's spent so long fighting for.

"How do you feel about Colorado?" he asks Jesse. "Maybe somewhere around Grand Mesa? Buy a house, build a deck, adopt some stray cats?"

Jesse looks surprised. "I didn't think you were listening to me, in all those fights."

"I may not have been hearing what you were saying, but I was listening." He squeezes Jesse's hand again.

Jesse smiles. "So, here's what I'm thinking: another day or two here, then we get a car and drive out to Colorado. Maybe we take the scenic route, head through Arizona and New Mexico?"

There's something in Jesse's voice that makes Gabe look at him twice. Going by car seems like a nice switch from all the planes they've taken recently, and they aren't on any kind of deadline, so there's no reason why they shouldn't.

"Anything in particular you're looking to do down there?"

"There's a stop I ought to make," Jesse says, and that's all he says, no matter how many different ways Gabe tries to ask. He resorts instead to pushing Jesse down on the bed, tugging at the waistband of Jesse's boxers and licking at his cock, making mischievous eye contact as Jesse struggles to stay silent, even as they hear Gabe's family puttering around in their rooms nearby. 

Payback, Gabe thinks, for that mile-high club business.

Jesse tugs hard at his hair, and Gabe pulls back. "Should I keep going?" he whispers.

"You're an ass."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a no," Jesse agrees, so Gabe lowers his head again, presses sloppy kisses along Jesse's length before licking at the tip, letting it twitch against Jesse's stomach. Jesse's head tosses back and forth on the pillow, and Gabe continues to lick at him as Jesse resettles, scooting up the bed so that he's a little more upright, his shoulder blades up against the wall. This way, he can reach Gabe more easily, which Gabe likes.

Gabe teases him for a little while longer, relishing the way Jesse reacts to every subtle flick and twist of his tongue. Jesse is so good, so quiet, and after probably longer than he ought to have drawn this all out, Gabe lets Jesse guide him down, carefully taking as much of him as he can. He lets Jesse set the pace, one hand on Gabe's face and one on his shoulder. He concentrates on opening his throat and on his breathing, on smothering his own noises, on the taste of Jesse in his mouth and how much he loves him like this. Soon, Jesse's fingers clutch into his shoulder. When Gabe looks up, Jesse nods a question at him desperately. Gabe nods back as best he can, and Jesse's pace quickens for a few moments and then he tips over the edge, thrusting up into Gabe's mouth as he comes. Gabe keeps going, riding it out and swallowing all of it down, only stopping when the last of Jesse's full-body shudders stops as well.

"Still an ass," Jesse murmurs as Gabe climbs up the bed to lie next to him.

"You love me," Gabe says.

Jesse nods, gives him a worn-out smile. "I do."

*

It's nice, Gabe realizes over the next day and a half, being here with his family and Jesse. Jesse fits in nicely with everyone: he helps Gabe's mom in the kitchen, aids Gabe's dad with some kind of home improvement project in the garage (Gabe's not sure what--he and his siblings mostly roll their eyes at their dad's projects these days), gets good enough at family charades to win even when he's not on Gabe's team, and quickly becomes Luis' favorite uncle. Watching Jesse hold the toddler, bouncing him on his hip and cooing at him, makes something unexpected clench in Gabe's chest--speaking of things he never thought he was going to get to have--

Gabe's phone rings. He fishes it out of his pocket and frowns at the display, which reads _Agent Marcs_. 

She _had_ said she was going to be in touch.

He excuses himself outside and answers the call on the front stoop. "Reyes. What do you need?"

"Hello to you too, Commander." Marcs sounds amused. "Is now a good time?"

"Not sure it's ever going to be a good time, but go ahead. What was it you needed?"

"I've run your conditions by my higher-ups, and everything's been agreed to. There's some paperwork we both need to sign, and we'll go ahead and do a baseline annual checkup while you're here--you _are_ going to come to us, aren't you?"

Gabe sighs. He had, indeed, said that. He doesn't want Marcs or her people anywhere near his family, not if he can help it. "Okay, where do you need me to be?"

They work out the details of where Gabe is going and how he's going to get there; with transport provided by Marcs and her agency, Gabe should be gone for a little over half a day tomorrow, back before dinner. He hangs up the phone and goes back inside.

When Gabe comes back in, Jesse excuses himself from where he and Luis are watching holo-vids (Luis is wearing Jesse's hat, and it is maybe the cutest thing Gabe has ever seen) and comes to stand with Gabe just inside the front door. "Everything okay?"

Gabe ushers them both back outside. "I need to go meet with Marcs tomorrow. Shouldn't take long. Are you okay staying here by yourself, or do you want to come with me?"

A series of emotions flashes over Jesse's face in quick succession: surprise, panic, anger, resolve. "Do you want me to come with you?" he asks.

"I'd rather keep you out of all this, if I can."

Jesse nods seriously. "You go do what you have to do. I'll manage here. Hell, your mom has been threatening me with your old family photo albums for a couple days now--maybe I'll take her up on that."

Gabe groans, and Jesse grins, leans in, and kisses him.

*

Gabe gets up, dresses himself in the clothes he'd left Overwatch in, packs a small traveling bag just in case, tucks his ring into the box with Jesse's--no need to let Marcs know anything more than she has to--and gets himself to one of the nearby military airfields early the next day, where he finds a small Overwatch transport shuttle waiting for him. He eyes its pilot suspiciously as they take off--can't be too careful, with all this Talon business--but they plot the expected course to the expected location, and Gabe arrives with no trouble.

Marcs meets him on the tarmac. "Good to see you again, Commander," she says, extending her hand for a handshake that Gabe walks past. She hurries to catch up to his long strides. "Okay, straight to business. That's fine. We'll get your paperwork signed, get you in with Doctor Ziegler, be in and out in no time at all."

Gabe takes his time reading the paperwork. He can tell that Marcs is getting a little impatient, but he's not about to put his signature on anything he hasn't read through thoroughly at least twice. When he's satisfied that the terms match what they had discussed and that there aren't any obvious ways that this agreement is going to fuck him over, he finally signs it and hands it back to Marcs. She provides him with a copy to keep--which he exhaustively compares to the signed version, to make sure they match--and then directs him down a long hallway to an examination room where Angela is waiting.

She also does not look amused at being made to wait.

"Good to see you, Doc," Gabe says, boosting himself up onto the exam table. He removes his hat, runs a hand through his hair a little self-consciously. He probably should have waited a little while longer after showering this morning to put the hat on.

"Commander--Gabriel," she says, trying and mostly failing not to smile. "How many times do I have to ask you not to drag me into your nonsense?"

"A couple more, apparently." 

Angela's completely right, of course; he and Blackwatch had taken advantage of her goodwill more than once to help them out after hours, off the books, with a minimum of paperwork and fuss. She'd been an incredibly good sport, good at her job and only sighing dramatically at them every half hour or so. Gabe trusted her-- _trusts_ her--with his life, and with the lives of his people, which is why he'd thought of her immediately when Marcs had laid out her terms.

Angela huffs a laugh. "Well, it's too late for me this time, I've already signed the paperwork. But whatever nonsense you get into next, I'd appreciate if you could keep me out of it entirely."

"I'll do what I can." Gabe pauses, unsure what all Angela knows, what all he can tell her. "People I can trust seem to be in short supply these days."

"The Swiss base has certainly been bustling with activity since you left," Angela says, in apparent agreement. "The Strike Commander has been stomping around with much heavier boots than usual, and they've led a number of agents out in handcuffs." She fills him in on the goings-on as she bustles around him, putting him through the paces of the standard Overwatch annual physical. 

Gabe realizes, as he listens, that he doesn't miss it--the maneuvering, the politics, the _responsibility_ \--at all.

When she's done, Angela makes him look her straight in the eye, tells him to take care of himself and to take care of Jesse, won't let him leave until he agrees. "Tell Jesse that we send our love," she says, her cheeks going a little pink.

Gabe gives her a gruff smile and puts his hat back on. She must have signaled out somehow, because there's a knock at the examination room door and Marcs lets herself in.

"See? Was that so hard?" she asks him. 

He scowls at her and lets her lead him back out to main room. On the table he'd sat at to sign his paperwork is a secure comm, along with all the tools Gabe would need to disassemble and reassemble it. He takes his time here too, making sure that, at least as far as he can tell, the comm is free of bugs and has all tracking on it hard-disabled. When he's satisfied, he turns back to Agent Marcs, who seems to have wised up this time and brought a book.

"Are we good?" Gabe asks.

Marcs puts her book down and nods. She picks up a matching comm and fiddles with it for a moment, and then the one Gabe's holding pings loudly. He checks his, pings hers back in return. 

"Let us know when you've arrived safely at your destination," she says, tucking the comm into her pocket as Gabe tucks his into the bag he'd brought with him, alongside the paperwork he'd signed.

"I look forward to never seeing you again," Gabe says.

Marcs laughs, a bright sound. "Given the complicated mess you've introduced my people into at Overwatch and what a pleasure you've been to work with, I can honestly say the same, Commander. Take care."

Gabe shakes her hand this time, and then he's on the transport back to LA.

*

"Your mom did pull out those photo albums," Jesse says into Gabe's hair as they lie in bed that night, Gabe nestled into the crook of Jesse's shoulder, their legs tangled together. "You were a really, _really_ cute second grader."

Gabe buries his head in Jesse's chest. "Oh god, did she show you the ones from the school play?"

"Yep. You know, she took enough photos at that play to run through the whole thing like a flip book?"

Gabe nods, still not raising his face to look at Jesse. "I _know_. She showed them all to my prom date too."

"Not her fault you were the cutest little shit." Jesse's voice is almost unbearably fond, and Gabe looks up at him now, where he's smiling down at Gabe. The smile goes a little still, and Jesse asks, carefully, "You ever thought about having kids?"

Gabe shrugs, just as carefully. "Never thought too seriously about it, figured that running an organization like Overwatch was as close as I was gonna be allowed to get. Guess I'll have to give it some more thought," he says, and Jesse's smile lights back up.

*

They leave a day later, after having procured for themselves a second-hand pickup truck from a friend of Gabe's dad. Gabe's siblings all have work and lives they have to get back to, and as much as Gabe loves his family, it's time to be moving on. Luis takes it hardest, bereft at the loss of his newest and most favorite uncle, but there are hugs and tears all around, well-wishes and promises to see each other again soon, and then they are on the road.

It's a leisurely drive, Jesse behind the wheel, humming along with a series of country songs on the radio that Gabe's never heard before while Gabe stares out the window at the scenery rushing by, basking in the late-morning sun as it transitions to early- and then mid-afternoon. They make good time, and it's not very far into the evening when Jesse pulls off the highway at an exit labeled for Santa Fe. Gabe's read Jesse's file, knows that he hails from these parts originally, but Jesse stays silent, pulls into a hotel and books them a room for the night.

They spend the evening holed up in the hotel room, looking at real estate in the Grand Mesa area online, cheerfully arguing with each other about what their ideal house would look like. Gabe swipes through page after page of houses for sale, looking at each one, evaluating the size of their kitchens, how much sun they let into their living rooms, the amount of closet space each provides. Jesse is more laid back, assuring Gabe that their perfect house is out there and that they'll know it when they see it.

In the morning, Jesse gets them up early, checks them out of the hotel and gets them back in the truck. Gabe half-expects them to just get back on the road, but instead Jesse drives them out of town a ways, the city turning into the suburbs turning even sparser still, until Jesse turns down an unmarked gravel road. They drive for a little while before Jesse makes one more turn, through a small metal gate nearly-hidden in the scrub, and into what Gabe suddenly recognizes as a cemetery. They pull halfway off the road and park, and Jesse takes Gabe's hand and leads him up to a pair of matching, weathered headstones, both inscribed with the name _McCree_.

_Oh._

"Hey, Ma," Jesse says, leaning down to the headstone that says _Eleanor_. "I brought somebody to meet you. I met his folks, so I figured it was only fitting that he meet you too. He's--" Jesse pauses, swallows hard. "He's very important to me."

Gabe grips Jesse's shoulder and squeezes, hoping to convey the sympathy he's feeling, the strength he hopes Jesse can draw from him.

Jesse pulls him a little closer, beckons him down so that they're both kneeling in the patchy grass in front of the headstone. "This is Gabe," he says to the headstone. "He's saved my life a dozen times over, in a dozen different ways. He got me out of Dad's old gang, gave me a second shot at a good life, didn't let me settle for being a less good version of myself. He loved me when he probably shouldn't have, and trusted me enough to follow me all the way here."

"It's nice to meet you, ma'am," Gabe says, inclining his head at the tombstone, unsure what else to do.

Jesse laughs a little, then turns back to his mother's grave. "We're engaged, Ma." He pulls the box with his ring in it out of his pocket, opens it and places it on top of the headstone. "I know you're probably laughing at me, after all those talks we had when I was a kid about how I thought marriage didn't make any sense, when I swore I was never going to let it happen to me. But here I am, a grown man, bringing my fiance to meet my folks."

Jesse leans forward, puts his head against the tombstone, whispers something that Gabe can't quite make out. When he leans back, his eyes and cheeks are wet.

Gabe puts an arm around him, sits still with him while Jesse's shoulders heave with ugly, silent sobs.

"Your son is a good man," Gabe tells the tombstone, not letting go of Jesse. "He's saved my life too--he came into it when I was in a place that didn't seem to have much light, and he brought the light with him. I don't know what I'd do--who I'd _be_ \--without him, and I love him with all of my heart." He reaches out with his free hand, presses it against the headstone, murmurs a quiet _thank you_ ; whether it's to Jesse's mom or to Jesse himself, Gabe's not sure.

Eventually, Jesse stands, wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt, puts the ring box back in his pocket. Gabe stands too, brushing the dirt from his knees. Jesse asks Gabe to give him a minute, so Gabe ambles back to the truck, and he watches from there as Jesse touches the gravestone again, says more quiet words he can't hear. After a couple of minutes, he comes back to the truck too, squeezes Gabe's hand, and hops in the passenger side this time.

He didn't once acknowledge that his dad's grave was even there, Gabe realizes.

"You want to get married?" Gabe asks as he climbs into the driver's seat, feeling a little emotionally raw but trying to keep it from his voice.

"I proposed to you, didn't I?" Jesse gives him a crooked smile, tips his hat down over his eyes a little bit, does his best to tuck his feet up underneath him on the truck's bench seat.

"Let's try that again: do you want to get married now? I'm not sure I can take another minute of not being married to you, Jesse McCree."

Jesse tips his hat back up, gives Gabe a searching look as he starts the truck. "Even after this?"

"Especially after this."

"We ain't dressed for it."

"You can say no," Gabe says gently.

"No, no, let's do it. I need a minute to--" Jesse huffs a laugh, "--to put myself back together, but I love you and I want this. Let's do it."

*

In the end, it's almost anti-climactic. They go to the Santa Fe courthouse, show their IDs and hand over a little bit of cash, and then they're in front of a Justice of the Peace. It's a small room, municipal-feeling, with dark wood paneling and a floor that squeaks under Jesse's boots. It hardly feels like the kind of place where somebody's life ought to change, but here Gabe is, staring at Jesse, feeling like his heart is about to burst, feeling like the luckiest man in the world.

He says _I do_.

Afterwards, they're directed down the hall to an even smaller room where someone with a blowtorch helps Jesse affix the ring to his left hand. Gabe stands in the hallway and waits, somehow still anxious, scrolling through news on his phone. There's nothing in the media and nothing from Ana or Jack, which is probably a good sign? Jesse exits a little while later, staring down at his hand, looking a little dazed.

"Husband," Gabe says.

Jesse's smile is nearly blinding, and he says back, "Husband."

*

Jesse makes them both set their left hands on the bench seat between them in the truck, snaps a picture of their hands and their rings with his phone and sends it to off to the _Got Out While The Gettin Was Good_ group chat, to Ana and Fareeha and Angela, to the Newtons and Christina and, after retrieving the number from Gabe's phone, directly to Jack Morrison. Then he switches off both their phones.

"We don't have to deal with that now," he says, and Gabe laughs, steers them back out to the highway. They travel in comfortable silence, the music on the radio filling the air between them.

"I want to take your last name," Jesse says, apropos of nothing, after about half an hour on the road.

Gabe shrugs. "We're married. You can do that." 

Jesse grins.

"Did you--should I--" Gabe starts to ask, but Jesse cuts him off.

"No, god no." He looks aghast. "I couldn't ask you to do that. Your name is _famous_ : Gabriel Reyes, Hero of the Omnic Crisis. Mine's got no good memories for me."

"You _could_ ask me to do that."

"Okay, I _wouldn't_."

"Well, how do you feel about hyphenating?" Gabe offers. "McCree-Reyes?"

"Reyes-McCree, it rolls off the tongue better." Jesse says it aloud, _Jesse Reyes-McCree_ , several times, and Gabe does the same, _Gabriel Reyes-McCree_. Gabe likes the way they both sound.

They cross the Colorado state line as the pop song on the radio hits its chorus, something about making it to the promised land, and Gabe thinks that he has finally come home.

***

Gabe wakes up from a dream about fire.

He sits up in bed, breathing hard, a little overwhelmed by how real it had felt. He'd been at the Overwatch headquarters in Zurich. He and the Strike Commander had been arguing about something that made no sense--just like the good days, Gabe thinks wryly--and then it had been flames, searing heat and pain, followed by a bright and angry cold.

It wasn't real, though. He and Jesse had left Overwatch two years ago. They'd bought that house and filled it with furniture, built that deck and put a hot tub on it, adopted those cats and spoiled them rotten. They volunteer in the community, consult for the UN every now and again, and have started the application process to become foster parents. (Just when Gabe had thought he couldn't love Jesse any more, Jesse had come to him and said, _I want to help kids who might turn out like I did, kids who need a home_ , and the wave of unabashed tenderness he'd felt had nearly knocked him off his feet.)

However real the dream had felt, it wasn't real. This is. 

Next to him in bed, Jesse rolls over, snuggling in next to Gabe. This disturbs the cat who had been tucked up between them; he retreats to the end of the bed to curl up with his brother, a betrayed look on his face.

"Everything alright?" Jesse asks him sleepily.

"Bad dream," Gabe says, laying back down, letting himself be pulled into Jesse's arms. "Go back to sleep."

"Love you, Gabriel Reyes-McCree." Jesse whispers.

Gabe kisses his forehead. "And I love _you_ , Jesse Reyes-McCree." There will be time for worry in the morning. For now, though, there's this, and it's all that Gabe has ever needed.

**Author's Note:**

> Gabe's sister Julia and her husband and son are supposed to be the family that Reaper is watching in the Overwatch holiday comic. 
> 
> Also, the cats are named Mitchell & Hobbs; when Gabe finds out that Jesse has named their cats after characters played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in movie franchises he loves, he just shakes his head.


End file.
